Through the Night
by crowleysayskeepthemuffins
Summary: It's been 5 years since Lip graduated, since Ian enlisted and since Mickey skipped town. Now Ian has come back to Chicago fresh from war and Mickey is back because Terry has finally died. After 5 years Ian and Mickey reconnect each night over the phone because Ian cannot sleep through the night anymore.
1. Chapter 1

The kitchen faucet is dripping. It's echoing this _plip plop plink_ over and over again like a serrated drill opening up his skull and jack hammering into it. The worst part is that sometimes he thinks that it's stopped and then _plink_.

He snaps his hips forward again and again and wont that god damned sink just fucking –

"Stop!" The body underneath him is hissing and crumbling in on itself. "Jesus that's too hard, you're being too rough."

Mickey is suddenly overwhelmingly aware of the sweat covering his hands. It's not his and it momentarily makes him want to gag. He wipes them off onto the bed sheets and pulls out from whatever fucking mistake he and his dick fell into.

He pads the short distance across his shitty one bedroom apartment to the kitchen and practically tares off the rusted handle and curses loudly when it greets him with a slightly more rhythmic drip.

"I'm sorry I just – I guess I'm just not used to that roughness or –"

Mickey cuts him off. "It's whatever I don't care."

"I'm sorry."

He snaps and turns to face the man who was officially overstaying his welcome. "Jesus fucking Christ I said it's whatever what the fuck do you want from me a hug or some shit?" He needed a cigarette. God what time was it even? He was going to be fucking late for work. "Just get out."

Like a wounded animal licking his wounds the man dragged on his clothes and slunk out without another word – just a sidelong glance like something was just stolen from him. Mickey considered that a compliment because he was a selfish thief and it's all he had so who cares. He doesn't make them fuck him – they want to be stolen.

His stomach is churning. The smell of the sweat on his skin is lingering and it's not familiar. It's sour and scared and pricey like someone who had the audacity to buy body wash from someplace other than cvs.

The sound of gunshots begin to go off and Mickey blunders around the pile of clothes he threw somewhere on the floor. 1 shot, 2 shot, 3 shot – he had 5 before it went to his voicemail and the caller was told to _'fuck off I probably wont call you back'_. He only goes to snatch it up and answer because he doesn't think that he'll be able to hear it from his boss in person. If he was going to get chewed out tonight he was only going to be able to not commit murder via the phone.

5th gunshot – fuck.

He has a shitty phone that probably wasn't even sold in stores anymore. The front screen was cracked and it didn't have working caller id but it worked so who cared. It gave off an eerily green glow from underneath the used condom he'd ripped off probably the night before from another no name fuck. It was actually kind of gross.

1 shot, 2 shot… "What the fuck?" No way would his boss call him twice in a row. No one cared that much about the bouncer at a titty bar.

"What?" He spit out the word after tossing the condom in the trash and pulling on some pants.

"Hey Assface." Mickey tripped on the bottom cuff of his jeans and wacked his head into the doorframe letting out a loud hiss. "Are you okay?"

He felt his body start to go cold. "Why the fuck are you calling me?"

"Is that really how you're going to greet me? We haven't talked in what is it – 5 years now?" His sister sounded exactly the same. Not that he thought she would sound difference but fuck if he knew what 5 years would change. She could've been a man now for all he knew. "Nothing to say Mickey? Are you fucking kidding me?"

"How did you get my number?" It was the first coherent question in his mind.

"Lip found you for me." There was a pause. Lip Gallagher. The Southside. His sister and a Gallagher –_Gallagher._ "He actually gives a damn about my peace of mind and wanted to help me figure out if my own decent piece of shit family member I had was still breathing or not."

Silence.

"Where are you?" Her voice was small and it made him cringe. This was his fault.

A siren blared past the open window and New York City cried out. "It's better if you don't know."

He fumbles with one hand to light the Marlboro red now dangling from his lips. It was his last one. New York had made him even more of a smoker, which he didn't think was possible. If he wasn't done in by his past then he was sure lung cancer was going to be the sweetest bitch of all.

"Mickey, god damnit." His sister breathes out a heavy sigh and he knew that sound. Could pin point it anywhere. He had worn her down more than she should have let him. "Dad's dead."

"You still with Lip huh?" Gotta say I bet against that."

"Did you hear me?" Mandy's voice was wary. "Dad, he died yesterday."

Mickey watches the ash burn down his cigarette. It was nearly one in the morning now. He was definitely fired.

He sits down on the end of his bed and tries to regain control of the muscles in his right leg. It's jumping up and down like how he used to get when he did too much coke in one run.

"How did he die?"

She clears her throat. "Heart attack."

He can't help but scoff. A fucking heart attack. The world was god damned _funny_ sometimes. It would take something as simple as a heart attack to take down Terry Milkovich, Live large and die simple. Death is the ultimate little black dress, the bitch is simple and swift and ruthless but she doesn't need much to do you in.

His phone started to beep. Call waiting? Is this a fucking joke? In 5 years Mickey had barely received 10 calls and now, _now_ he was getting two at once?

"Mandy jesus hold on someone else is calling me it's probably my fucking boss calling to fire me."

"Wait there is something else Mickey hold on –"

He clicked over and sucked hard on the smoke as if trying to kill his lungs more quickly. It was all unraveling now anyway. "_What_?"

And he really should have hung up. Shouldn't have even waited for the smooth voice to materialize on the other end of the line. He knew it at that moment. He knew before his name was even breathily spoken – he _knew_ who was on the other line.

Time lurched and dragged all at once after that. His fingers fumbling idiotically to click back over to his sister. Mandy god damn it. If Mickey really thought long and hard he could probably trace everything bad in his life back to her. If he hadn't given half a shit about her when she was born he'd probably be dead by now and lets be honest – that would have been so much easier.

"Mickey?" She sounded relieved like she hadn't believed he'd come back. "I need to tell you something. Please it's about Ian, he's back."

He held his breath and bit down on his lip through the filter of his cigarette. He could taste the blood.

_"What?"_

_"Hey Mick."_

_"The fuck is this?"_

_"I- I need to talk to you."_

Mickey's heart was racing. Yea, he fucking knows he's back. He's on his other line.


	2. Chapter 2

"We didn't even know that he was coming back. I mean it's been awhile since anyone heard from him, he sent some letters. Still Lip really thought he'd have let us know but Fiona was just about to leave for work and then he was standing on the doorstep." Mandy continued on as if everything she was saying wasn't a bullet right into Mickey's chest. "He seems good though. _Readjusting_."

Readjusting. That's a scary fucking word.

He bit the inside of this cheek. "I gotta go."

"Wait what? Are you going to call me back?"

Mickey growled out "I don't have your fucking number you're the one who called me." She stayed silent and there was that twinge of guilt he tried to put out of his mind ever since he left that night in December. Mandy slept soundly even when he tripped on his way out the door. He left an envelope with two measly hundred-dollar bills for her in his secret drawer full of gay porn. He knew she'd go there to throw it out and cover his ass, even after he abandoned her. A classy goodbye for a Milkovich. "Just call me again in the morning. Don't forget. I need to get some sleep and can't deal with this shit right now."

She moved something close to the receiver on the other end and for a painful moment Mickey thought he'd made her cry. "Yea ok, I'll talk to you later."

Click.

By the time he switched back to the other line it was dead, nothing but a dial tone. Gallagher was gone.

And suddenly everything seemed wildly and cruelly unfair. Who gave Lip the right to find him? And who gave him the right to let _Mandy_ torture herself by dragging him back into her life? He didn't talk to her all this time for a reason.

Still, here he was sitting in his shitty place in the sketchier part of town half naked, smelling like another man – no doubt unemployed now – and fucking miserable.

It made him want to chew out Mandy _and_ Ian. He couldn't even call them back. Not that he wanted to, but still it was the principle of it all. And _that's_ when he started to get pissed.

If he hadn't grown up in the Southside, if he'd had a normal shitty parent – one that just drank and didn't love you and tried to buy your affection instead, maybe he could have stayed out of juvie. If he had a father who wasn't so well versed in weaponry and violent hatred then maybe he wouldn't have needed to get a gun himself.

If he didn't have to set fucking everyone straight in that damn town then maybe he would have been able to hold a job and would have had enough money to get a phone with fucking _working_ called ID and he would be able to call Ian back.

He didn't want to, but still. He should have at least had the fucking option.

Mickey threw his phone across the room and sucked his breath in at the loud clatter it made against the wall. God he hoped it didn't break.

_There's something warm and sticky covering his hands and he thinks he's probably just fucked another loser but it's not right. It doesn't feel right. He looks down and see's that his hands are covered in blood and the smell is so strong it clings to the back of his throat._

_"It was an honorable discharge." Ian's talking to him like nothing is wrong but his eyes are dead and unfocused and he only has one arm and Mickey wants to say something about it. He wants to tell him to stop bleeding all over his goddamned floor because he didn't want to wash it out and he'll let it stain he swears._

_A gunshot sounds from outside and he sees the bullet pierce through Ian's stomach like it's the most natural thing in the world. Another one goes off and clips his left shoulder this time._

_Ian doesn't even flinch but just looks from wound to wound and back up at Mickey. "I'm glad you came back Mick." And he wants to ask him what he's talking about but he can't get it out because Terry comes in shooting a third time with a bullet right to Mickey's brain —-_

A gasp rips from his throat as he jolts awake and hears the 4th gunshot of his phone go off. It had been a nightmare.

"What?" He's drenched with sweat. "Mandy?" Silence."Gallagher?"

"Don't call me that."

The alarm clock glowed 4:34 at him angrily. He'd only slept for 3 hours. "It's 4:30 in the morning."

"_4:34." _Ian corrected. "4:34 AM, Tuesday morning."

Mickey grimaced. "Yea ok thanks for that I almost forgot the names of the days of the week." He wanted to hang up and drink himself back to sleep; he didn't want any of this. "How did you get my number?"

"Lip."

"Lip." Mickey repeated. "Well he's fucking officially number one on my list to kick the shit out of."

Ian didn't say anything and Mickey wondered if they had gotten disconnected. The only sign of his presence were shallow breaths that sounded wet and rattle-y. "So you got out huh? Army all it was cracked up to be?"

"When are you coming home Mick?" _Home_. The word sounded wrong.

He got up and closed the open window next to his bed because it was fucking cold nowadays. "Why the fuck would I do that?" Mickey wondered if Lip and Mandy were living in their own place now. It seemed weird even for them to pull this shit. Tag team phone attack – unless she didn't know. "Why aren't you sleeping?"

"Why aren't you?"

He laughed. "You're kidding me right? I was sleeping until you woke me up!" And by sleeping he meant having the most hellish nightmare since he first left town but Gallagher didn't need to know that.

Ian cleared his voice on the other end and he heard what sounded like a blade hitting a wall. "I wake up every night still. It's hard to readjust."

"You knew what you were signing up for."

A horrible sound that may have once been the refreshing laughter of the younger man's crawled through the phone. "Yea I did."

When he heard the line click dead Mickey was so beyond the idea that he had been hung up on that he actually said hello over and over into the phone like an idiot. It was useless though; there was no one there.

Just as fast as Ian punched his way back into his life he ran right out of it and Mickey thought maybe he understood how Jeff or Jon or whatever his name had been had felt earlier that night.

Because he was sure some part of him was just ripped out and stolen and being clutched tightly by a red head in Chicago.


	3. Chapter 3

He didn't bother going back to the club he worked at to tell them that he was leaving. Notoriously, he burned his bridges he didn't cross them. Why change what's worked up until now?

Mandy had called him the next morning begging and pleading him to come back to town for the funeral._Just the funeral Mickey please. I need you here for this I can't do it. I'm afraid of who might show up._It was a low blow – they both knew it, but he held his ground.

It wasn't until she told him that she wanted him to know his niece.

And fuck it all to hell right? It was some twisted through the looking glass shit that was being pulled on him. He'd made his bed and he'd been laying in it tossing and turning and scratching at his skin because it had bed bugs. He didn't need people coming in from his past and telling him that they were going to take him shopping for some clean sheets.

His sheets were filthy; he tracked his tragedies that way.

_"Ian will be happy to see you I bet. Another familiar face you know?"_

_"Don't tell him."_

_Mandy argued against him on the other end demanding that he grow a pair. And god damnit it had been 5 years already._

_"Just don't tell him." He thought that the surprising amount of plead in his voice is the only thing that made her agree._

The thing about ever having a hometown is that you can never really get away from it. Southside kids especially – it's like they get infected. When given the option to take the train back to Chicago or steal a car, Mickey steals a car. It's not even a question. It's instinct.

So why can he put a bullet between someone's eyes without blinking, without _flinching_, but he can't stop his hands from shaking like a bitch when they wrap around the steering wheel? Why does the air feel thicker all of a sudden when he hits the road and heads towards his past instead of far away from it?

Why is he puking on the side of the road in the middle of the night? Because he's a fucking coward.

The phone in his pocket starts to go off and his fingers are trembling. Bile burned up and down his throat like acid. There is a very distinct taste to blood and to vomit and he wonders why he knows it so intimately. Why he can detect the faint penny taste even in the midst of expelling the contents of his stomach – his lip was bleeding.

He spit it out. "What?"

"Hey Mick."

Another wave of bile crawled up his throat and his consciously swallowed it down wincing as it raked against his insides. "Why are you calling me Gallagher?"

Ian sighed on the other line. "I can't sleep."

The car was still running up ahead a couple of feet and he realized that he didn't put the fucking lights on. No one would see it if they took the corner too fast and _crash_ – he'd have no car and have to high tail it back to New York somehow. If he could only be that lucky.

"You know they got drugs for that right?"

"Yea, I know." He trailed off. "Makes it hard to wake up though."

Mickey rolled his eyes and then felt stupid because he couldn't see him do it. "Jesus pick your poison then."

A silence hung between them and he felt like he was jumping out of his skin waiting for something to fill it. Mickey was used to silence as much as he was used to noise, but not like this. It's like when a dog doesn't eat. Ian quiet, it's the loudest noise there is.

_"Don't –"_

_Ian turned and looked at him, his face eerily composed and the entire conversation oddly quiet._

_"Don't what?"_

_The words caught in his throat and it took all he had not to let out a sob._

"How've you been?" Was he serious?

Anger swelled up inside of him. "Oh just great how was war?"

How was turning around and walking away? How was it to get fucking shot at over and over in some foreign country while he couldn't even pass another fuckwad in uniform without wondering if Ian was still breathing. Was that good?

"It was fine."

Mickey had been driving for hours. He knew it had to be at least 3 in the morning. "Are you gonna make a habit out of this or something? This fucking calling in the middle of the night and expecting me to lull you back to sleep. Because I don't know if you realize but it's been a long time since I needed your dick to keep me company at night."

He hated himself. God he hated himself so much and those words were all it took. The phone fell from his hands while he doubled over and threw up again. Air wanting to escape him as a test of will to live every time he choked and dry heaved and what if he just gave up right here. Died on the side of the road in a pile of his own vomit with nothing to show for his entire life except a stolen car and the ghost of someone he once loved with every sick part of himself on the other line.

Mickey stayed there on his hands and knees and thought it was ironic. The air slowly began to trickle back into his lungs and he reached out for the phone that had just missed falling into the mess of it all.

"Hello?" He wheezed.

Ian's breath was hiccupping. "You know that you can't die from that?"

"What?"

"That moment, when you can't get any air and you choke and choke and god it's like you're almost there and you think that if you just wait a few more seconds you'll finally just stop breathing."

Mickey held his breath while Ian spoke. "What are you talking about?"

He cleared his throat and hiccupped once more. "Throwing up. Obviously."

But it wasn't obvious. It was fucking with his head. And when he went to ask Ian what he meant by it being impossible the line click off and he lost him again.

The stench of puke and blood and sweat tore into his senses and there on the side of the road heading back to the Southside Mickey did something that he hadn't done since the night he left 5 years ago.

He cried.


	4. Chapter 4

_"What is it about middle class people that makes them think they're so special?" Mandy hands him the 3__rd__ joint of the night and it's almost out. Her hair is a greasy mess on top of her head but he doesn't comment cause that would be really faggish of him. "It's like they sniff out the poor and fucking run from them – like we're a disease or something."_

_He sucks in deep and keeps the smoke in his lungs as long as he can before he feels like he'll pass out. "It's the flowers. They plant the shit in their yard thinking that it'll give them some credibility." The smoke weaves out and encircles them both. "Like roses will keep them above the line or some shit."_

Mickey plucks at one of the fresh roses in front of his house and curses when a thorn pricks him. Fucking Mandy.

His knuckles make contact with the door of his old house, the one that he ate and slept and fucked and was beaten in – it feels odd. He wants to run away. It's like a slap in the face that the town doesn't feel foreign to him. A thought corrupts his mind that maybe it was only yesterday that he and Iggy were getting high in the backyard and shooting at squirrels.

But that was a lifetime ago.

"Fuck it." He mutters under his breath and turns toward the el tracks nearly missing the step on the way down. The door behind him creaks open and if he weren't so afraid of looking like an asshole he would have started running.

"Mickey?" He stops. "Where are you going?"

He turns and feels his blood run cold as he spots the sleeping baby in Mandy's arms. A small pink bow was barely attached to her tiny strands of hair. He suddenly felt like a threat, a disturbance in Mandy's façade of some desperate attempt at normality.

"I didn't know if you were home."

She makes to run toward him but stops only because of the small human wriggling around. He's never been so thankful.

"I'm home. I'm always home." She laughs and motions towards the baby. "Michaela is always crying for something. I swear I've never appreciated my tits until she was born."

"Michaela?" He quirks an eyebrow, "You're fucking kidding with that shit right?"

Mandy frowns so deeply he worries she's giving herself a permanent wrinkle. "Fuck you."

"Jesus I didn't want you to go naming people after me I mean I ain't dead." His skin crawls at the thought of him leaving some sort of legacy. Someone unfortunate enough to be connected to his memory in anyway shape or form.

"I didn't know that." Mandy spoke quietly.

A shadow moved behind her and though it shouldn't have been any surprise, Mickey felt his heart jump at the sight of Lip Gallagher. The lover of his sister, the father of his niece, the brother of his favorite regret – fuck him.

"Hey Mickey. Long time no talk." Lip curled his mouth up into what was supposed to be a smile but he could only see a smirk. A smirk he wanted to wipe off.

His fingers twitched. "I hear you're the one who found me." Mandy looked between the two of them and a flicker of indecision crossed her face. Who was she supposed to stand behind?

"I did."

Mickey cleared his throat and took a step back closer to the house. "Yea I been meaning to thank you for that –"

"Alright." Mandy spoke up and stood to stand between them. "Put your junk away both of you and keep quite." Her arms tightened around her daughter and Mickey couldn't help but think this is what she wanted all along. A little life that she could make right to make up for theirs. "Get the fuck inside before you cause a scene."

And it didn't matter who she was talking to because stupidly the bitch was important to both of them and they would listen to her. Truly, Mickey didn't have it in him to fight and he _did_ want to get inside – before Gallagher, _the other one_, managed to see him.

The inside of their house was different. All the cracked peeling paint was still there and the old furniture that had been worn down by drug deals and nondescript fucks, but it wasn't quite as unwelcoming.

Baby toys had replaced the guns on the table, a crib now stood where the chair Ian had been forced to sit on with a gun to his head was –

It was different.

"So when's the funeral."

Lip took Michaela from Mandy's hands and he couldn't help but see her fingers reflexively grab for her back. "Next week." She rubbed her eyes. She looked like she hadn't slept in days. "It was the soonest we could put him in the ground."

Lip chuckled, "Ah the Milkovich tact."

"Only second to the Gallagher charm." Mickey bit back.

Lip smiled and shook his head before walking to the crib and placing the sleeping child down. "I'm gonna head out. Mickey, I trust you wont get her hooked on coke or shot gunning beers just yet?" God he wanted to fucking punch him.

A tension settled in his shoulders. "Going out to screw over some poor bastard?"

"Why you want first crack at them?" Mandy put a hand on his arm as a warning. "I'll keep you posted on the scumbags of the street and their current deals but afraid I'm just heading to meet Ian at the hospital."

The world swayed beneath Mickey's feet for a moment. "What did the fuckhead manage to get himself shot here instead of overseas?" Something sickening churned inside of him.

"Nah just meeting him to pick up Carl. Little weasel smashed his hand trying to figure out which wall was the hardest in the house."

It oddly comforted him to realize that the little sociopath hadn't changed.

Lip kissed Mandy goodbye and closed the door quietly behind him. Mickey couldn't remember a time in his entire life that someone had not slammed the door in that fucking house.

"So." Mandy offered him a smile. "You been good?"

Had he been good., that was a fucking question and a half. He had been slugging it out on the streets of New York. Going through detox and retox of any fucking painkiller he could get his hand on to numb himself from the inside out – finally getting a somewhat normal job and only being hooked on alcohol and then _BAM_! He's back here.

"Been fine." He chewed the inside of his cheek and shifted his eyes away from her to the crib. "So a baby huh?"

"Yea." She smiled and it reached her eyes, something he wasn't sure he'd ever seen before. "It just sort of happened but we all love her. Ian was excited to find out he was an uncle."

He snorted. "Yea I bet."

Mandy took a step closer to him. "You should see him Mickey."

He shook off her affections and went to turn to where his old room had been. "I swear if I walk in here and see Lip's shit everywhere –"

"It's still your stuff." Her smile fell a little. "I always sorta hoped you'd come back." She stuffed her hands into the pockets of her too tight jeans. "Drove dad fucking nuts but that's cause he hated you and all."

Yea he hated him; he hated him to his very last breath. The sense of victory that Mickey felt being the last one standing was almost worth what he lost along the way though.

_"She's gonna fuck the faggot out of you kid. And you're gonna watch."_

Almost.


	5. Chapter 5

_Never leave a man behind, never give up, never stop, never leave your man behind. _

_"LIP!" Ian held his eyes focused and unblinking straight ahead of himself. The obstacle coarse dark and smoky and cramped and he was sweating. Could literally feel it pooling in every crevice of his body._

_Never leave a man behind, never give up, never stop, never leave your man behind._

_The mantra so deafening in his ears that had he stopped moving he was sure he'd fall victim to the most excruciating migraine due to the volume control inside of his head. He would never leave his men behind._

_"LIP!" Something tugged at his consciousness but couldn't hold his attention. "Gallagher!"_

_Flick. The lights all blindingly bright shone at once and he shielded his eyes. A few blinks of white orbs flashed before his pupils before he could focus on his surroundings again. _

_Within seconds his commanding officer was centimeters from his face. "You just killed your man Gallagher because you could not pay attention enough to hear him yelling out your name for help!"_

_Lip, right, they were talking to him._

"Are you stoned?" He spun on his heels in the half full waiting room of the hospital. Carl held up his arm now donning a blue cast. "Fiona is gonna be pissed."

Ian laughed and shoved his little brother's shoulder with his own. He wasn't used to Carl being his height, but that's what 5 years does to someone he guessed.

"Nah we'll just tell her you did it from saving an animal down a well or something."

Carl scoffed. "Tried that last month when I busted my eye from falling off the Milkovich roof." Ian's skin crawled at the name.

"What were you doing on the roof?"

His brother smirked, "Trying to see Mandy naked."

Ian shoved him again. "Be careful about that you little perv. That's your brothers girl and your nieces mom."

"So?" Carl quirked his eyebrow, "Boobs are boobs."

Ian shook his head, "It's different. Trust me."

Lip met up with them on their way out and they walked down the streets of Chicago talking about random shit. The whole time, Ian found himself entirely way too fucking on edge. Everything bugged him. The way people looked at him, the grate of the el on the tracks. He even found himself growing neurotic about the fact that Carl kept stepping on every crack in the sidewalk. What was the saying about that again? Step on a crack and set off a hidden landmine and blow up your entire brigade.

He couldn't remember.

"How you doing man?" Lip passed him a cigarette. "Getting bored of this monotonous shit yet?" Carl walked a good few meters ahead of them.

Ian offered the best smile he could. "Aw don't tell me you're getting sick of this place? I figured if you hadn't left now –"

His brother laughed. "I don't know. I think Fi is still secretly pissed at me for not doing the whole college thing. I know Mandy is, always throws it in my face whenever we're fighting about how _she_ had to do all the hard work with the applications. Like I didn't have anything to do with the GPA." He grabs back for the cigarette. "Whatever."

"Do you regret not going?" Ian feels the pressure of a headache build in the front of his mind. Lip looks at him quizzically for just a second but he see's it, see's the concern etched on his brother's face.

"No, but I bet I'd be singing a different song if I wasn't currently getting paid way too much to teach over privileged fucks how to mess with electronics."

"I thought you needed a degree to teach."

Lip laughed and ducked his head down sucking in another puff of smoke. "And who says that I don't have one?"

When they get home Fiona spends only a few minutes of wasted breath lecturing Carl on how to not be such a dipshit. She's too busy trying to make everyone sit down and _eat a dinner as a family for once_.

It killed Ian the way she looked at him, like she had failed him, had pushed him to leave in the first place. The softness in his sister's face was too much.

Debbie had spent most of her days out of the house since he got back. It turned out that she was going to be the hardest to win back. Who would have thought – but he should have known. Hell hath no fury like a teenage girl with a grudge.

It's funny - they say that you can get used to anything if you're around it long enough. Ian thought that he probably agreed with that. When he first got to boot camp he got used to the crappy food. He got used to the early morning drills and the scratchy wool sheets on the hard thin bed he slept on each night. When he was in war, he got used to the smell – the _stench_ of mud and piss and vomit. He got used to it.

Now his freshly washed sheets itched at his skin. The smell of detergent made him gag and was offensively strong. He didn't realize that getting used to something else made it nearly impossible to be comfortable with the past.

It was a world that had kidnapped him and ripped out any and all sense of comfort only to replace it with a sense of normality. Now, he was utterly lost.

"_What?_"

The rough edge to Mickey's voice immediately calmed the tremors worming through his hands. He glanced at the clock. 3:52 AM.

"Has anyone ever told you that _what_ is a somewhat off-putting way to answer the phone?"

Mickey made a noise deep in his throat that made Ian have to squeeze his eyes shut. "Didn't ask for your fucking opinion on my phone etiquette." He wanted to crawl under his covers and shut out any and all sound beside Mickey's voice. "You're the one who keeps calling me."

He lets out a sound that sounds a little strangled. He thinks he's trying to laugh. "Yea I know. Can't sleep."

"You keep saying that."

Ian glances over at his brothers sleeping form and wonders why he's not with Mandy tonight. Wonder's if he's being babysat without his knowledge. "I didn't think that it would bug me as much as it did."

A silence hung tense between them. He didn't want to be the one to break it.

"As what did?"

A car alarm goes off and Ian drops the phone allowing a crash to echo throughout the room. A hand lands on his shoulder and his heart is racing, _dangerously_ erratic and fast.

_"You just killed your man. You let them die because you couldn't hear your own name!"_

Ian's fist connects with something hard and splits his knuckles. He screams out in pain and jumps back to the corner of his bed wedging his body as deeply into the wall as he feels is physically possible.

The next few minutes are a blur of Fiona crashing through the door and bathing them in light. Lip has his arms strongly wrapped around Ian's upper body and he's struggling against him fighting hard to not feel trapped. Carl stares wide eyed with his cast now bathed in the blood of Ian's skinned hand and right before his last bit of energy drains from his body Ian notices the phone still lying on the rug.

He swears he still hears a faint voice asking "_did what?"_ on the other end.

**_I would just like to say I know very little about the army so I'm very sorry if any army flashbacks or references are unrealistic/inaccurate. _**


	6. Chapter 6

"Your mom is a fucking bitch. I hope you know that." Mickey squints down at the big blue eyes staring up at him. "And your dad is a huge fucking dick. A know it all." He sticks out his pointer finger and wiggles it at her. "Don't be a know it all."

It's 5 o'clock in the morning and Mickey wonders how his life got to this. A week ago he was beating up idiots at the club and then taking a new guy home each night. Get up, get off, get out.

Michaela gurgled and cooed at him before working her mouth into a tiny smile. It made Mickey jump because for a brief second he saw Ian in her. Recessive genes or some shit. She was related to him after all.

And Mickey, she was related to him too.

"Sorry about that by the way." He uncrossed his legs and stretched them out beside the crib on the floor. "Sorry about your name too. Like I said your mom is a bitch."

He felt his hand begin to cramp from the grip he had around his cell phone. It had been exactly 58 minutes since he heard Ian yell. 58 minutes since Lip picked up the phone demanding to know who the fuck it was. 58 minutes since he hung up without saying a word, without asking if Ian was okay. 58 very long minutes.

"This world sucks." Michaela reached out a tiny hand and grabbed for his sleeve. "Oh shit – uh no – go back to sleep." He scooted a few inches away from her.

She started to cry.

"Is Carl okay?" Ian kept his eyes trained on a very intriguing spot on the table.

"He's fine, a little pissed you bloodied up his new cast –" Fiona sighed and ran a hand through her hair. "Actually he'll probably think that part is cool when he wakes up so just give it a night."

He huffed out a laugh. "Silver lining."

His sister smiled weakly and placed her hand on top of his before standing up and walking into the kitchen. "Want some tea?"

He looked up away from the spot. "Tea?"

"Tea." She opened the cabinet and Ian watched her shoulders slump before she closed it and went to the fridge. "Fuck never mind you want a beer?"

She placed the bottle down on the table before him and he popped the cap off before wrapping his fingers around the neck and taking a swig. It tasted sour and off-putting. Like a bad memory of something that once made him feel alive.

He wished he were drinking tea.

"Shit please don't cry." Mickey scrunched his face up and attempted a pathetic attempt at making soothing noises. It sounded like he was choking. "Fuck what do you want?"

Michaela wailed and screamed and the fat droplets falling down her cheeks seemed disproportionally large for her face. Mandy was sleeping in the next room and he silently prayed she would stay asleep. He couldn't deal with her right now because he just knows she'd start asking questions.

Why are you awake assface? What are you doing to my baby? Are you actually trying to carry on a conversation with a 10 month old?

He had no good answers.

"Ok, ok –" Mickey reached over into the crib, his back cracked. "I've never actually held one of you things before so fair warning." He placed one of his hands underneath her neck supporting her head and used his other arm to hold her tiny body. He wondered if he looked as awkward and out of place as he felt. "Better?"

Slowly the cries started to die down and Mickey found himself bouncing slightly on the balls of his feet. People did that right? Rocked a baby? There was a song about it. Although he's pretty sure it ended badly for the kid in that song.

"Ok I do you a favor now you do me one." The eyes that eerily reminded him of his own stared wide like she could actually understand a fucking word he said. "Let me know if I should check in on Gallagher."

He had never in his life felt more stupid than he did at that moment. Standing in the living room of his old childhood hell house and talking to one of the only people in the world he figured would sit and listen to him longer than 5 minutes. Asking a goddamn _baby_, what the fuck he should do next. He thought this had to be it – he had hit rock bottom.

He thought that he should just put her back down and go back to his bed and just forget about the entire night.

It wasn't until he felt warm dampness start to form in his hand and saw the smile turn up on Michaela's lips that he realized she gave him his fucking answer.

Ian was buzzed. He really actually hated that term because Gallagher's don't get buzzed, they get drunk. If you grew up in the Southside then alcohol was equivalent to water and you'd better be able to hold your liquor or else you were fucked.

So one did not simply get buzzed, they either functioned or blacked out.

He tipped his fourth beer back down his throat and wondered how many more it would take until he fell asleep.

A sick feeling of guilt unfurled in his stomach at the thought of Carl's bloodied cast. He was lucky he had the cast on already because Ian was sure that he would have needed one after tonight. He fucking hated himself for that.

Lip had passed out an hour ago after Ian practically begged him to go to bed because he didn't want him to worry and _he was fine just got spooked _and _it wouldn't happen again he swears it_. Fiona hadn't been that easy.

She stayed sitting at the kitchen table across from him just staring. Conversation couldn't be held because he had nothing to say. She wanted answers – he didn't have them. She wanted to know why he was back – he could only tell her a lie.

But can a lie become the truth ever? If you create a new reality around an idea then is that the new reality? Everything is all relative anyways right?

A severe and startling knock on the front door tares him from his thoughts. He looks at the clock on the wall and see's that it's almost 6. No one wakes up that early for anything.

His feet hit the floor and he thinks that yup he's _definitely _buzzed because his head is all fuzzy and he thinks he might feel just a little bit better than he's felt since he's come back and then he opens the door –

And he thinks maybe he's more than buzzed because he could swear he's face to face with Mickey Milkovich.


	7. Chapter 7

"Are you gonna let me in?"

Mickey shuffled his feet awkwardly. This was a mistake. This was a great big fucking 'you will live with the repercussions of this for the rest of your life' kind of mistake.

Ian looked god damn _awful_. He was shocked. No one had thought to warn him about it and it made him want to just bolt out of town at that moment on principle alone. Mandy could have said something – _anything_. His fucking ass Ian was 'good'. Were they all high?

There were circles so deeply purple under his eyes it looked like someone socked him in the face. His hair – as gay as this made him sound – looked faded and not the vibrant red he was used to. He simply looked like a shell of the man that he was, the man he was supposed to be.

Ian placed one of his hands on the doorframe and leaned his entire body into the movement. Mickey clenched his fist hard enough to feel his chewed fingernails biting into his palm. Despite the obvious affects of war on the man in front of his, he still had sinewy lean muscles jumping under his thin tshirt. It was a devastating sight because it further proved what he was thinking – this was a _mistake_.

"So my dad died." Mickey found himself continuing to talk, rambling to fill the silence. "That's why I'm here."

Ian's eyes unfocused and refocused before landing on Mickey's lips and sliding up to meet his gaze.

"I met the baby. Which was kind of a shock." He pressed his nails further into his skin letting the pinch ground him. "She kinda looks like you which is fucking weird."

"She's got your eyes."

What his voice did to Mickey should have been illegal – it was fucking criminal. His skin felt like it fit all wrong like when you put on a shirt and you know it's twisted but you just can't get the seam to line up correctly. It made his stomach ache. "That's stupid your brother has blue eyes too."

Ian just shook his head minutely. "They're your eyes Mick."

"Well that makes no sense because she ain't my kid." He was getting defensive, he could feel himself tumbling into the bitter asshole stance that he'd taken his whole life. "Whatever it doesn't matter."

Ian swayed slightly on his feet. Not enough for anyone to notice. It's only one of those things you would see if you were so fucking painfully familiar with every part of a person and you knew their stupid quirks and how their feet were always the things to go first when they started to feel the effects of alcohol.

"Jesus Gallagher are you drunk?"

He twitched up the corner of his mouth and accentuated the crookedness of his jaw with the smirk. "Buzzed."

Mickey scoffed and pushed forward past him into the house. He practically hissed when his shoulder brushed against Ian's and he felt his skin sear at the contact.

In all his time in the Southside and with Ian – Mickey wasn't sure he'd ever actually seen the entirety of the Gallagher house. It was sort of an enigma to him. People always running in and out – half of them not even living there – and all seeming to have a safe place to lay their head at night. Even Mandy had checked out for a while and taken up residence there.

_"It's nice to, I don't know, know you'll have a meal on the table always. It feels safe."_

_"That's a bunch of shit." He spit out the taste of meth on his tongue. Their house had reeked of it for days. "Nothing good can come from that house."_

He takes in the empty beer bottles on the table next to the couch in the living room. "Are you sleeping on the fucking couch?"

Ian nods and saunters over to it before flopping down. Mickey catches a whiff of his shampoo with the breeze he created by the motion.

"I hit Carl."

Something rears its head inside of Mickey. Ian would never in a million years lay a hand on his younger siblings. Sure him and Lip could go at it like dogs but that was different. That was a more even fight – he thought, maybe. And it dawned on him that he had never actually ever really seen Ian fight anyone.

"Why? He burn your favorite army porno or something."

Ian let his eyes roll back in his head for a moment and Mickey knew that look. Gallagher was on some other shit, he knew it. "Are you fucking high too? Jesus what the fuck happened to you?"

"Can't sleep." He dragged a hand over his face. "Sleeping pills. Found them in the bathroom Frank left them probably."

He wasn't sure why he did it. Why he let himself flop onto the spot on the couch next to the red head that absolutely no doubt ruined his life. Maybe he was worried or maybe he just felt obligated because he's sure Mandy would have his balls sliced and diced if anything actually happened to Ian. Not that it was his problem much yet responsibility. Maybe Mickey was just bored and now he couldn't really sleep and what was the point of not sleeping separately?

If neither one of them was going to sleep then he could at least stay there and make sure that Gallagher didn't fucking overdose in the middle of the night. And he _was_ the one who had told him to take drugs for it – so maybe he was responsible, just a little bit.

They sat in silence for what felt like hours but was really only about 15 minutes. Ian's head kept lolling back and snapping up and Mickey found it kinda ironic that the guy took pills with a beer chaser to help him sleep and here he was trying to stay awake.

"Remember when I left?" The words sounded muffled and far away and he figured he had only a few more minutes before sleep finally grabbed Ian and pulled him under.

The question was like a knife to his gut. The memories locked deep down and faraway inside of him where even he could not get to easily. "Yea I remember."

"Did you miss me Mick?"

His jaw locked. Teeth tight and practically crumbling from how tightly he was clenching them. "What are you doing Ian? What is this insomnia shit?"

"When is the funeral?"

"Wednesday. I think. I don't know."

Mickey turned away from where he'd been staring at the man next to him. He didn't know what he had been expecting. Some grand revelation and difference from the stranger on the phone he had been constantly being hung up on for the past few nights. For 5 years he had worked _damn_ hard to carve out any and all emotions he had let seep through for Ian Gallagher. He had become weak and being weak had made him sloppy because you get sloppy when you start giving a shit about people other than yourself. There was no logic to emotions and that scared the shit out of him because if Mickey relied on anything it was his ability to gain the upper hand in a situation. He couldn't do that around Ian – he made him irrational and strange and that's probably why the next words fell out of his mouth.

"You wanna come with me?"

A soft escape of breath slipped from his lips before Ian mumbled a '_sure'_ and let his head fall dangerously close to Mickey's shoulder.


	8. Chapter 8

Mickey slipped out of the front door of the Gallagher house a half hour after Ian passed out. He didn't watch him sleep. He didn't wonder what was happening in his dreams while his eyeballs twitched back and forth underneath his closed eyelids.

He didn't.

A fancy looking coffee maker sat on the kitchen counter of his house. Fancy by his standards anyway. It was only slightly worn and it looked more complicated than necessary. It made him ache to see it because it _looked_ desperate. Mandy was decorating her fake little dollhouse.

When they had been little she had loved dolls. He would make her cry whenever he plucked off their heads and burned off their plastic hair making her room smell like something rancid. God he never understood why she gave a fuck. But he could see it now – she still wanted a pretty little dollhouse with a sweet little doll to look after. It was sort of sad.

He tried for a total of 7 minutes to figure out how to make the fucking thing give him a cup of coffee before ripping open the fridge, giving up, and grabbing a beer.

"Jesus what time is it?" Mandy walked into the kitchen rubbing her eyes. She glanced a look over to the crib in the living room. Michaela was still asleep.

"7:48." Mickey deadpanned and took another swig.

His sister looked him up and down confusion forming in the space between her eyebrows. "Why are you awake?"

"I didn't sleep at all. Your damn baby kept me up all night." And by she kept him up he really means he kept her up talking to her about absolute ridiculous shit. No wonder she was still sound asleep in her crib. She probably got only an hour of shuteye the whole night.

Mandy rolled her eyes and walked over to the coffee machine. She pressed two buttons and it started to make a whirring sound signaling life which was already more than he had managed to get out of it. "Wanna trade that beer in for some coffee?"

Yes. "No."

They stayed in silence while she filled a cup with caffeine and he got up to get himself another drink. The house creaked around them, it sounded like it was going to just fall to pieces. Literally cave in on his head, which would be ironic he supposed. A house of crumbling cards.

"What day did dad die?" He looked at his sister, her hair falling loosely around her face. She didn't have any of her gunk makeup painted on yet and he thought she actually looked much younger than her age.

She took a sip of coffee and winced as it burned her lip. "Umm Wednesday I think." Another more tentative sip, "Yea Wednesday night."

Today was the following Friday. "When did Ian get back?"

Mandy paused the cup held firmly in her hands. She looked at him quizzically as if trying to determine if this was a trick or not. "Sunday."

He didn't say anything, just took another gulp big enough to take half the bottle with it.

"You called me on Monday." Their eyes now locked. "Would you have called me if Ian hadn't come back?"

Mandy said nothing, but her silence was everything.

"Am I here for dad or am I here for him Mandy?"

The front door to their house creaked open and Mickey's body tensed preparing for a fight. Lip sauntered through looking disheveled and pausing only to see that his daughter was still asleep before plopping himself down next to Mandy.

"You look like shit." He looked Mickey up and down.

He noticed the general lack of calm in Lip's features. "Right back at ya."

He smiled and took the coffee from Mandy's hand. "Yea I was up with Ian for a bit. He had a thing with Carl." Mandy grabbed the coffee back and Lip scrunched his nose up at her with a tenderness that actually made Mickey want to kill them both.

"Is he okay?" She asked.

Lip nodded and smiled. "Yes he's good. Just a little jumpy still I think."

Mickey slammed his hand down on the table and made Mandy jump. He didn't even realize that he did it. It was like a punch had come out of him. _Good?_ Really? They had to be fucking with him.

"So why is he back?" Mickey ground out.

A flicker of something went across Lip's face but it was gone before he had a chance to really see it. "Honorable Discharge. That's what he said."

That's what he said. You mean that's what he lied through his teeth about. It was glaringly obvious, even his own brother didn't believe him.

But why would he lie? Mickey couldn't understand what would happen to push Ian into lying about something like that. And how the fuck had he managed to even get in the army in the first place? He had never quite worked that one out and he'd left town before trying to find answers.

_"You gotta be 18."_

_"Yea I figured a way around that."_

"Where is he now?" Mandy asked while getting up to go check on a now vocal Michaela.

Lip shrugged his shoulders. "Dunno. Woke up and he was gone. Probably went for a run or some crazy shit like that. You know him. Always training even though he doesn't need to anymore I guess."

Mickey stood up abruptly and tossed the now empty beer bottle in the sink. It shattered.

"What the fuck Mickey!" Mandy yelled. Michaela started to cry and he could see her grubby little hands reaching out for something. Reaching for what exactly? Who knew. "Where are you going?" He was half way out the door and didn't bother stopping to give an answer.

Ian never really trained. Sure he was always working out and dodging bullets. Saying stupid army shit over and over again like the more he said it the more real it made it. But in the few times he had suckered Mickey into helping him he noticed that it wasn't training at all. It was running.

Ian was always fucking _running_ from something. So much so he ran right out of the Southside because of it. And sure, he couldn't really blame him for that one because he ran too. The thing that was itching at his skull was why Ian ran all the way back. What was so fucking awful that happened to him over in wherever he was that had him hightailing it back to where it all started?

_"I didn't think it would bug me as much as it did. _

The line was still ringing in his ears. As what did Ian?

Mandy came running out of the house following him and he really tried hard to ignore her. "Mickey! Don't forget the funeral is tomorrow!"

He had never heard better news in his life. If Gallagher wanted to play a game of clue then fucking fine. What better place then a funeral to make him spill his guts.


	9. Chapter 9

You'd think that someone as hated as Terry Milkovich would have next to no one at their funeral. Turns out more people actually show up when they hate you because what the fuck do they really care about respect?

Mickey looked around fidgeting like a fucking maniac. There were at least 50 people there. People he knew were all gunning for some type of payback. A bad bet, some spilled blood, a drug deal gone wrong – all on his dad's head but meant for them to now pay the price.

The entire Gallagher clan had showed up which surprised him at first but then he thought about how he had god damn _asked_ Ian to come and Lip had practically formed a new fused being with Mandy so it wasn't all that weird. He guessed, whatever.

But it was Terry, and he didn't even want to be there. The thought that anyone else not related to the fucker willingly took time out of their day was still something to wrap your head around.

It had started to rain and at first it was almost a welcome relief because it served as a distraction from everything else but now that the coke was pumping fully through his system it just felt weird. Ian had yet to come over to him but Mickey could swear he'd been staring at him. Or maybe he was the one staring? Is he the one who's supposed to go over? He invited him, which had been stupid enough.

"What is wrong with you?" Mandy hissed out of the corner of her mouth.

He looked at her and back at the baby in her hands. The whole thing was fucked. "Why did you bring her?"

"Where else is she supposed to go?"

It was true, everyone was fucking _here_. "I'm gonna take a piss."

Mandy clutched her daughter tighter into her chest and tried her best to shield her from the rain. Lip lit up a cigarette and she shot him a look before he rolled his eyes and took two big steps away from Michaela. Like second hand smoke was the worst thing that was gonna happen to a Milkovich Gallagher crossbreed.

The ground was quickly turning into a sinkhole of mud and Mickey had to actively try and sludge through it. His legs ached and his skin was itching and his bladder was about to burst and he was absolutely thinking about pissing on the coffin but even he thought that might be a bit overkill.

A giant tree stood a good couple of yards away and he was kind of amazed he even made it that far as he whipped it out and sighed in relief.

"Classy." Ian glanced from Mickey's dick to his face and smirked.

He looked more put together than Mickey could ever remember seeing him. More dressed up than he had been at his wedding – but this was a celebratory occasion.

"What are you doing here?"

Ian genuinely looked surprised and maybe even hurt? Yea, a little hurt for about .2 seconds before drawing a blank face again. "You asked me to come."

"So now you listen to anything I say?"

And he wasn't sure if it was the coke or the rain or all the people he didn't know but Mickey just couldn't stop himself from talking. His mind was racing 100 miles an hour and his mouth wasn't able to filter out what was a thought and what was a verbal command.

Ian took a step forward and Mickey zipped up his fly before squaring his shoulders and pretending like he had any sort of self-control.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"I just find it really fucking interesting that all of a sudden you're calling me in the middle of the night and showing up after turning around and walking away for four years." He felt out of breath. "I'm sorry, four years _minimum_." He threw the words back into Ian's face with such precision and purposeful intent that he couldn't stop once he started. "And fuck you by the way for acting all high and mighty when you left because – because I was there you know. You weren't the one who had just got fucking _forced_ into marrying a whore just to keep someone else alive."

His entire body was humming. He wanted this fight he really did.

Ian was staring at him, his mouth had opened just a tiny bit like the words had silently punched him and he needed a breath. "Mick –" He reached out a hand and quickly dropped it before he could make contact. The air around them was crackling and Mickey wondered if it started lightning whether or not they would just get struck and be done with it all. They were under a tree after all.

This isn't what he wanted. He didn't want Gallagher's sympathy. He wasn't the broken one.

A scream pierced through his thoughts and Ian whipped his head almost violently to the sound. Mickey looked back to the crowd of black dressed pawns and tried to search out his sister. He couldn't.

Before even realizing he had made the decision to move Mickey was pushing through a crowd of people and making his way to where Lip was now standing toe to toe with one of the worst people his dad had dealings with.

Back when he was little and before he realized that it was actually kinda stressful being a Milkovich Mickey had been nearly obsessed with the idea of running with a bad crowd. His dad had taken him and his brothers to a guy named Martin's to '_pick up some shit, it'll be quick'_. But Martin was too busy strangling some poor bitch with his bare hands that Mickey didn't really remember to take notes or relish in his first major drug deal.

Martin looked exactly the same 15 years later.

That his sister was in such close proximity to this guy, that the fucking _baby_ was. It made him wild.

"Just leave we don't want trouble. This doesn't need to end badly." Lip's jaw was tight but his words were seemingly calm.

Martin spit onto the front of his shirt and he thought that was it because although genuinely the Gallaghers were the best family in the Southside, they were anything but docile pussies.

But Lip just glanced down at his no doubt hep c infected shirt and let out a breath. "Just walk away." And _fuck_ Mickey saw it now. He was protecting his sister.

He took a step forward to add to the human front when a fist connected with such incredible force to his kidney the pain came only second to the shock. That was all it took.

Within seconds another kick came at him this time to his lower back and it was unlike any pain he'd ever felt. He'd taken his share of beatings, the most brutal by his own heroin-fueled father, but this was a sneak attack. He wasn't prepared to fight back and instead of helping him react faster the coke was now just fucking with his head. His heart was racing and god he just hoped he didn't die and end up buried next to Terry.

He could see Lip finally breakdown and throw a punch when Martin came closer to Mandy and he knew he needed to move because he'd be damned if he let her take any of this.

But his sister was gone now and he could hear her screaming his name and Fiona – had to be Fiona – screaming back that he was fine and she had a baby to keep safe.

He closed his eyes and waited for another kick because god all that talking had kinda exhausted him and he was so fucking done with this town and this family and the Gallaghers that it took him a minute to realize he wasn't feeling any new pain. Voices were shouting now again louder and more agitated and it was Lip. Lip was screaming at someone to '_jesus stop it you're gonna fucking kill him Ian!'_

Mickey moved and caught his breath as the searing pain worked all the way up to his lungs. He could see Ian on top of someone – he wasn't sure who exactly but whoever it was they were done. Not even an arm moving to block the blows. He knew that stance; one or two more bad enough blows and the guy would be dead.

"Gallagher!" He screeched while scrambling to his feet. Lip looked wildly at him. He couldn't pull Ian off. "Fuck!"

Mickey used all of his weight to wrap his arms around Ian's torso and pull him down. It made him want to pass out. The close proximity between them going straight to his head and making it difficult to focus.

Ian must have felt it, must have felt the difference in the contact because he froze up and practically jumped back landing square on Mickey's chest as they fell back to the ground. His chest was heaving erratically that his back against Mickey made it seem like he was seizing.

"What the fuck Gallagher!"

Ian rolled off to the side and wide-eyed stared at him. "It was a dishonorable discharge."

And in that moment with his whole body aching and Ian covered in the blood of the guy who did it to him Mickey whole-heartedly wished he'd just pissed on the coffin instead.


	10. Chapter 10

The look on Mickey's face was etched into Ian's eyes. It stared at him and screamed and scratched his corneas every time he blinked. He wants to say that he had any control over himself at that funeral but he didn't. Not really.

Lip and Fiona had dragged him home practically by his ear. He didn't try and fight them off when they pushed him down into the kitchen chair and inspected his hand. Didn't even make a remark when V was called over because _'goddamnit I think it's broken'_. When the burning hot water sprayed all over him in the shower and Lip sternly said he had 10 minutes to wash the blood off before he came back in to check on him Ian only nodded.

He was done in 7 minutes.

He tried to replay the events in his head. Following Mickey to the tree. Hearing everything he said – how he married the whore to keep someone alive.

Someone. It was him.

Terry would have killed him, both of them probably. Mickey had to have been hopped up on something because he was never that chatty naturally and god it had hurt _so_ badly to hear it all. Because Ian didn't want to be the villain of this story but he couldn't help feeling that it was the only role left for him to play.

When he saw the guy spit on his brother his blood started to boil. When he stepped toward his niece he was already mentally ticking off the ways he could put him down – but when Mickey was writhing on the ground, it was something else.

"You almost killed that guy." Lip was standing with his arms folded across his chest in front of him. He'd been sitting on his bed with a towel wrapped around his waist for longer than he should have been.

"I know."

Lip continued to stare. "You know? You don't think that's weird Ian? You don't think I see how fucking off you've been since you came back?"

He reached out to grab a joint from the dresser drawer and took an abnormal amount of comfort in the fact that it was still fully stocked. The idea that maybe Carl had carried on the tradition flickered through his head. "I know it's weird."

Lip sighed and sat down next to him. "Just tell me you're okay. Tell me I don't need to be staying up all night worrying about you."

Ian smiled and nodded while lighting up. "I'm fine and you don't need to stay up all night worrying about me."

Someone else was already doing that.

The first time Ian had told Mickey to meet him at '_their spot'_ Mickey will admit that he actually went to the wrong place. He went to the baseball field. He went and he waited for an hour before going home pissed as all hell and actively avoiding Gallagher for the next 4 days. It was only later after he let Ian believe he'd ditched him for something better that he realized he had simply been at the wrong spot.

After Ian left for the army Mickey waited a full 6 hours before sprinting out of the house and heading straight to the roof. He'd never tell Ian this. He never even admitted it to himself that he had some tiny bit of hope that Ian had been fucking with him. That he would find him sitting there wearing that stupid ass grin because Mickey had passed his stupid ass test.

But he wasn't there. Mickey had waited 3 hours and he knew he was in the right place that time – it was just too late.

He kicked at a rock and wondered if places like this ever change. It looked exactly the same to him; it was actually the only place that seemed entirely untouched by the past 5 years.

It was past 4 in the morning and here he fucking was. His back was killing him, his side was killing him, possible internal bleeding _actually_ killing him and he was standing on this roof staring at the back of Ian's head.

"Phone convos aint enough anymore now you're actually dragging me out of the house?"

Ian didn't even turn to look at him. "You didn't have to come."

Of fucking course he did.

Mickey walked up until he was only a foot behind Ian. The town was lit up in patches. The houses blanketed in darkness most likely having fallen behind on the electric bills again. It was an ugly looking town, even from up here.

"How's your hand?"

Ian glanced over at him now before looking down to his ace bandaged wrapped wrist. "It's broken."

"The fuck you not wearing a cast for then?" He tried to veil his concern but it seeped through anyways.

Ian heard because the corner of his mouth twitched for a moment. "Going to the doctors tomorrow. Maybe we'll get a family discount because Carl was just there."

It was a joke. He knew that, but it sounded so god damn _sad_.

A spasm jolted through Mickey's back and he had to sit down. Ian followed suit and he wondered if this was worse than standing. Sitting required more of a definitive movement when you wanted to get up and walk away. Standing left room for casual drifting. Sitting seemed more dangerous.

"So how was New York?"

Mickey's jaw dropped involuntarily. "How did you know that? How did you know that's where I was?" Ian picked at the wrappings on his arm but made no move to answer. A creeping revelation worked through his mind. "It was you wasn't it. You were the one who told Lip to find me, not Mandy."

"I'm sorry I just left Mick."

"Don't – it's done." Mickey chewed his bottom lip like he wanted to devour it.

A breeze swept past them and he couldn't help but notice the way Ian's skin prickled at the cool air. "Can I ask you something?"

He scoffed. "It's not like it'll matter if I say no."

A chuckle got caught in Ian's throat and didn't quite make it all the way out. "Was it better in New York? Was it all you thought it would be – you know, _getting out_?"

He stared at the man next to him. This man who shattered his life with one tire iron and one stupid smile. He wanted to hit him and then he wanted to take him home and spend the rest of his life apologizing for it.

"Not really." The honesty of the statement made him pause. "Mostly it was just trying to forget about all of this, but it kinda made it worse."

He wasn't sure what he was referring to anymore. The town, Gallagher himself, his family, he didn't really know anymore. Because everything had always been very black and white for Mickey up until everything was fucking tinted in red. Not the red he saw when his dad hit him or when Mandy was sitting in her room crying. It was red for every time his stomach churned with jealousy, or when he swallowed down something forming in his throat. It was red for when he felt his mouth crack into an actual smile and not a sneer, for when he got shot _twice_ and wasn't even mad about it. It was red for every time his nose bled from one too many snorts of coke in the shitty apartment he had tried to forget about Ian in.

"Me too." Ian breathed out next to him before staring back out at the night.

The ridiculous impulse to knock his knee against Ian's overtook him but he didn't do it. And when the gunshots of his cell phone's ring sounded in the air between them and Ian's entire body seized with such tense fear Mickey could do nothing but watch and wonder about the dishonorable discharge.

He sat watching and wondering while the man he'd been constantly waiting for took off leaving him on that fucking roof once again.


	11. Chapter 11

He took his phone out from his pocket and chucked it clear off the roof. The thought that that might have been a mistake hit him directly after he let go.

His body screamed in protest as he ran in the direction Ian had disappeared to. Tears prickling at the back of his eyes and the worst type of cry trying to claw out of his throat. He wanted to rip out his hair and shed his skin because what else are you supposed to do when you have to run but have never wanted to sit so still in your entire life?

Years of bad choices, of blood on his hands and on his name and words meant to kill; he'd never regretted it more. Mandy had used to talk about bad karma. She would always do something good after something bad to '_balance out my karma'_ because '_it always gets you in the end Mickey'_. The clarity of the statement had never rung truer in his head.

This was his karma. This was god or whatever the fuck existed out there coming down and ripping out his spine to show him that he'd had it all along and _'bet you'd wished you'd used it when you had the chance'_. This was the real life culmination of waking up in a cold sweat and crying in New York. Because you can only blame the drugs for so long and only so many guys can run out because of the whispers of another man's name on his lips before he has to face it.

He pushed through the front door to his house and fell face down onto his pillow bunching his fists so tight he thought maybe he'd break his hand too. They could match, both tearing themselves apart for the other, because no wound has ever been so sweet as the one that veils itself as love.

Mickey woke up to the sound of a baby crying and for a split second he forgot where he was.

Mandy and Lip were talking to Michaela in the living room and he closed his eyes again relishing in the sound of doting parents. It was such a foreign sound to him that he wondered how different he would have turned out if he'd heard that when he was growing up.

"Was Mickey here last night?" Lip's voice dropped down to a half whisper and Mickey immediately shot up in his bed to get a better listen.

"I'm not sure I didn't hear him leave. Why?"

Yea, why Lip? He tiptoed so that his ear was mere centimeters from the door. "Ian was gone for a while. I woke up and he wasn't there. He didn't come back until almost 5 in the morning."

"You think they were together?" Mandy's voice questioning and only half as skeptical as he would have liked it to be.

"I don't know." There was a pause and more cooing from Michaela. He felt ridiculous, like a 12-year-old girl eavesdropping on her bitchy friends. He started to go back to his bed but stopped when Lip eventually spoke again. "Did you tell him?"

"No."

Ian watched his hands until the tremors stopped and then he drank himself to sleep. The drilling in his brain the next morning was a friendly reminder of the fact that yes he was still somewhat human and _yes_ humans got hangovers. When he felt so uncomfortable in his skin, he found it ironic that a hangover would be the welcome reminder of who he was.

"Hey Debs." He smiled at his sister as she walked past his room.

She was so tall now and no longer a little girl. It made him cringe to think of everything a boy could do to destroy her. Pain was inevitable when you fell in love with a beautiful boy.

"You smell gross." She wrinkled her nose and kept walking downstairs.

He thought about what sweat and regret and fear and genuine longing might smell like and figured she was probably right.

He probably smelled like shit.

It was his own fault, Mickey knew that. If he had just refrained from destroying his cell phone then he would not have needed to do what he was doing. And he did need to do this because _he_ couldn't sleep anymore.

And we all know whose fault that was.

The moon was a sliver in the sky because even she was afraid to see what the people beneath her were doing at this time.

He placed his hand on the doorknob not even having thought about if it would be locked – it wasn't.

Ian was sitting on the couch with his feet kicked up on the coffee table littered with baby toys. The shock that they were for Michaela and not that little black Gallagher – who he forgot the name of – hit him like a ton of bricks.

"Don't leave."

Ian turned his head. "What?"

Mickey swallowed down everything trying to stop the words he wanted to say. "Don't leave. That's what I was gonna say that day." He could feel his mind telling him to run away and didn't know whether to thank or curse his feet for becoming lead. "When you asked _don't what_. That was the what."

Ian stared at him with little to no surprise on his face. Slowly he nodded. "Yea I know."

He wanted to be furious at him and scream _if you fucking knew why did you leave?_ But he didn't, because he knew Ian knew. Ian had always known, right from the very beginning.

Mickey honestly didn't know who moved first, but they were centimeters apart now. Ian's breath hot on his neck and he got it. He finally fucking _got it_. So he's positive that he is the one who grabbed him and pulled him close colliding their lips together.

The memory of when he had been 15 and he took Mandy outside to watch the jaws of life rip open a car that had crashed into another invaded his brain.

_"I don't want to look."_

_"No you do trust me."_

_Mandy buried her face into his arm and wept. "Why are you watching?"_

_"I want to see if they survived."_

Ian was his car crash. Painful and unavoidable because the breaks had been slashed and he just needed to see who was going to survive. And just like a car crash, he was sure that had they not met in the middle they would have swerved and gone off the bridge in their separate directions and hit the water and drowned by themselves.

He grabbed at Ian's shirt and pulled at it because this was it. It was now or never. He thought quickly about a quote he'd seen graffitied on the side of a building about how lust is a man who is dying of thirst that craves salt – or something along those lines.

Would it be worth it? To die in the one moment that satisfied your need to be alive?

They fell back to the couch and one of them was crying because he could _taste_ salt and how fucking fitting was that?

When Ian pulled back Mickey noticed a scar on the underside of his chin that he had never seen before.

"What's that from?" He traced his fingers along the jagged line and was shocked at the way it made his own skin crawl.

Ian looked him dead in the eyes and smiled before grabbing onto his hair with an almost painful force and bringing them closer.

His breath traced the answer over his lips, "_you_."


	12. Chapter 12

_"It was an honorable discharge." Ian held a gun to his head, his hands were shaking and Mickey wondered if maybe he'd pull the trigger by accident._

_"That's not true." His voice sounded raw._

_Ian shook his head side to side and tears started to fall down his face. The insanity running through his body actually made him momentarily terrifying. _

_Mickey grabbed the barrel to move it away, but recoiled in pain. It was burning hot. _

_"Don't you feel that?" The words fell from Ian's mouth and not his. And the thought that was weird because he wanted to ask Ian why he was holding a burning gun and it must hurt his hand –_

_It was only when he looked down at his own body that he realized he was the one who'd been shot._

Mickey woke up panicked. His body felt like it had been torn from the dream faster than his mind was able to catch up. He ripped the thin, scratchy blanket off his body and scanned his bare skin for bullet holes. All that stared back at him were handprint bruises beginning to form on his hips.

Ian moved next to him still asleep but clearly dreaming. His body twitched and his skin was hot and flushed like he had a fever or was recovering from a good fuck.

"God damnit Gallagher." He shakily dragged a hand through his hair and let his head fall back down onto the pillow. "I think you're gonna kill me."

Eyelids fluttered and he found himself staring directly into Ian's eyes.

Something cloaked his pupils and Mickey wished he could have had longer to pick apart what it was – but just as fast it was there it was gone.

"Hey." The morning rasp in his voice made Mickey want to curl inside himself.

"Bad dreams?"

Ian shook his head no. "You?"

He licked the inside of his bottom lip. "Nope." They were awful liars.

When he still went to school somewhat regularly Mickey had been in science and had to put a growing plant underneath a dark box. The only light available was a small square cut out on the side and he remembered thinking that it was going to fucking die without any light.

Three weeks later he stormed into the class and ripped off the box because he felt so shitty about killing this plant but it _wasn't_ _dead_, it had grown toward the light. It was crooked and twisted and had actually knotted itself around another plant but still it was alive.

The sun peeked through the blinds of the window next to them and Mickey couldn't help but wonder if they were like that stupid ugly plant.

"I missed you."

He closed his eyes and let the words make him high. His hand moved to Ian's stomach and he just wanted to say so much but it would ruin it. He couldn't be eloquent and beautiful with his sentences because words were meant to kill. When fists failed you, words never would.

Ian moved closer and practically sighed at his touch. It reminded him of when it all started. When everything was desperate and fragile and not knowing if the other would turn away.

"What's this one?" Mickey found that his voice came out as a whisper. He didn't even know he was capable of whispering.

Ian put his hand over the one Mickey was using to follow a raised gash just under his ribs. They had been tracing each other's wounds all night until there was nothing left to do but stop asking questions. "War."

"What happened?"

He shrugged his shoulder and he couldn't help but stare at the way Ian's muscles bunched together. "Got stabbed."

He wasn't sure why but Mickey felt like something changed right then. Like he had flipped to the last page and saw that someone dies between here and now but he can't see who just yet.

"You seem in a good mood." Fiona smiled at him and continued plopping down breakfast for Carl and Liam. "Get a good night sleep?"

He grabbed some toast from Carl's plate and laughed at the scowl he gave him. "Yea a little."

Fiona beamed and it made him uncomfortable at how much joy it gave her. "Well good keep it up kiddo."

He smiled tighter this time and nodded. "Where's Debbie?"

"Oh she stayed over a friends last night. Some skank that has all the boys lining up at her door so I'm hoping she comes home without an std."

"Sister sex – gross." Carl put down his fork and shook the thought out of his mind.

He wanted to gag.

"And that's my cue." He flipped Carl the finger affectionately and turned to head back upstairs.

"Oh Ian wait!" Fiona called up to him. "Mandy called wants to go out to lunch with you and the baby. I told her you were still dead to the world but you should go over. Get out of the house."

"Yea sure sounds great." It didn't.

He wandered back into his room and stood staring at the ruffled sheets on his bed. The air still smelled like Mickey.

Since Lip mostly lived at the Milkovich house now he was rarely sleeping there anymore. Carl had been passed out on the couch no doubt drunk and unable to make it to the room and Liam was at the phase where he wanted to sleep in Fiona's bed so that she could make his nightmares go away. This left Ian with the closest thing he could call to his own room for the first time in his entire life.

He threw his shirt off to the side and dug to find a cleaner one. The mirror near the door reflected the scar Mickey had been so intrigued with just moments before he snuck out.

Ian traced it over with his own hand now. It was ugly as fuck, knitted like the skin hadn't wanted to heal correctly just to accentuate the memory all the more. _'What happened?' 'Got stabbed.'_

When you have so many scars you tend to rank them. It's the best way to remember them. This was his favorite, second only to where Mickey has kicked him in the face.

_"What the fuck are you doing?" He couldn't think, everything was so loud and there were bodies everywhere. The man screaming at him was bleeding out, Ian couldn't help him. "Are you crazy?"_

_He hadn't known that the bomb would go off anyways. It had been for nothing. Why did he ever think that war could combat war?_

_His eyes screwed shut and charged his arm toward himself with sure confidence._

_He fell to his knees and let go of the hilt of the knife in his hand, the blade now lovingly nestled inside his skin with precision. The last thing he saw before he passed out were the eyelids of his only friend there flutter closed._

He scowled at himself in the mirror before reaching pulling the new shirt over his head. On his way out the door he realized that it was actually the shirt he'd bought Lip for Christmas a few years back.

The thought that he should go back and change stomped out by the realization that he'd been playing his brother for so long now. It only seemed fitting.


	13. Chapter 13

"Look who it is." Mandy took Michaela's arm in hers and pointed her fingers at him. "It's uncle Ian!"

The blue eyes flashed at him and he smiled through the pit in his stomach.

"Hey beautiful." He walked over and entwined his fingers between her tiny hands while she laughed. "Oh and you too Mickey."

He froze and felt every ounce of color drain from his face.

Mandy kissed her cheeks and smiled when her daughter let go to pull at the bangs now tickling her forehead. "I've done it too. It's the price I pay for naming her after him."

A part of him hated her for that. He wasn't sure if she understood exactly what she'd done. When Lip told him that he had a daughter and Ian had a niece and he spoke her name with shifty eyes, Ian hit him. He full blown punched him in the face because _how could he do that. _He'd never be able to look at her as her own person – her face now only showing him the ghost of a disaster.

"Michaela." He rolled the name over his tongue and bit down on it – hard.

"Speaking of that fuck face," Mandy continued having pretended that nothing happened, "have you seen him around lately? He's been missing since last night."

Where was Mickey? He was on his skin leaving echoes of himself in teeth marks. He was the part of his brain that itched and calmed and left a scent everywhere so that there was no longer a safe place to breathe anymore – "I haven't seen him."

"Oh." Mandy smiled. "Well no worries. We should get going we have a reservation."

A Milkovich making a reservation, his world tilted just a little bit more.

There was something oddly comforting to Mickey about the fact that he'd been shot before, _twice_. It was like he no longer had any fear of it happening to him because he knew the pain and it fucking sucked but it was fine. And there wasn't much of a fear of dying because if he died well he'd be dead and that'd be it.

So he found himself smiling a little when he walked past the strung out heroin addicts in the alley next to the junkyard and he didn't even offer a second glance at the homeless guy swearing at him. Because all they could do to him was kill him and he thinks that might be okay.

The gate in front of the Gallagher house was almost as fucked up as the one that hung around his. It was rusted and creaked but still the entire family acted as if it had some magical power making it so you weren't allowed to come in unless invited and proving the yard to be safe or some shit like that.

"What the fuck are you doing out here?" He looked down at Michaela sitting and pulling at the grass. "Fuck you looking at me like that for?"

He scratched at the corner of his mouth. "I'm not gonna sit and pick at the grass with you." She continued to stare. The bottom lip on her round face twisted into a quiver.

"Fuck."

Mickey all but stomped his foot at how soft he was becoming because this was a baby and since when did he look out for them?

The gate cut his hand on the way in and he sucked the blood from it wondering if it was normal for someone to ingest as much blood as he had in his life. He was always bleeding somehow, or biting at soft skin and making it red – red red _red._

"Shouldn't someone be watching you or something?" Mickey glared down before sitting and crossing his legs. The grass was damp and he cringed. He really didn't like nature all that much. "Guess you got stuck with the short end of the stick huh? No one around to give a shit anymore."

She reached out and placed a hand on the hem of his jeans tugging with as much force as he imagined a mouse to have.

"Where's your uncle huh? Out wandering like a moron – fucking probably getting in trouble or convincing someone to get shot for him."

Michaela heaved herself up on her chubby arms and started to scoot toward him. "Oh god damnit no c'mon –" Mickey moved himself back looking like a crab with a broken leg and it became a weird little race. "Trust me you don't want to like me."

She stopped and looked up at him. He scrunched his face. "You do have my eyes don't you." She fell back onto her stomach and Mickey breathed out a breath he didn't realize he was holding. Something about such a small life wanting to be close to him made him panic.

"My advice – not that you want my advice but _my_ advice is that you get as far away from this place as possible." He plucked a blade of grass and squished it between his fingers. "Not that you don't have good parents, even your dad I guess but still this place it eats you up and spits you out." An ant crawled across his knee and he just watched it go. "I guess it's all about the people though because sometimes you find some decent ones."

She put something in her mouth and he instinctively reached out to take it away. "But sometimes finding someone sucks because it's not like getting shot when they leave it's like – it's like living without taste buds and drinking stale beer and fucking no name dicks just because. Because I've been shot, for your dick Uncle." The grip on his jeans tightened. "And I can say that when he left it was like getting shot but having no bullet to show for it so what's that leave you? Just holes and no substance."

A throat cleared on the doorstep and Mickey jumped to see Fiona standing there with a beer in her hands.

"The fuck. How long have you been standing there?"

She took a step forward. "Long enough to be the someone watching her."

He went to stand up and realized that Michaela was still latched to his pants. The goddamn bitch had him trapped.

"Jesus can you like take her or something."

Fiona laughed and placed the bottle at her lips swallowing down the liquid and making no attempt to move. "You know I don't think you're as tough as you wish I thought you were."

"Fuck you."

Michaela made a noise and god was she _reprimanding_ him for swearing? Who the fuck was raising this kid?

Fiona let the smile drop. "You gonna stick around Mickey?"

He rolled his eyes. "Why do you care?"

"Ian needs you to stick around," another mouthful of beer.

He was dumbfounded. She knew. Of course she fucking knew. Gallaghers were like one person, not a secret could be kept among them. He wasn't sure what he'd thought, who he'd even tallied up having known about him and Ian. It shouldn't have been a surprise that Fiona knew.

"He fucking told you." Mickey tried again to rip his leg away from Michaela but she had a death grip now, the mouse was all jacked up on steroids.

Fiona began to descend the steps and he wasn't sure what it was about her but he suddenly felt much smaller. Maybe it was the air of confidence she held, or the respect she still somehow demanded _and_ received. "No one told me." She thrust the beer at his chest and he caught it before it spilled everywhere.

Michaela laughed and Fiona reached down plucking each finger from his jeans. "Despite what you may think Mickey, people actually have a higher bullshit meter than you give them credit for. You put two pairs of people in front of them and they'll always be able to tell which one actually has shit going on between them."

He scrambled up and turned his head to spit. "Too bad I don't know what the fuck you're talking about."

"You and my brother. You two got major shit going on between you." She turned with Michaela peeking at him watching wide eyed over her shoulder. "You can't fake that kind of thing. It doesn't take a genius."

He gripped the beer bottle and thought that maybe it would break and glass would cut his hand and send him to the hospital. He could get the good kinda meds and just fucking coast until he realized that this was all a very bad dream. Because freezing over your past wasn't the hard part, it was the defrosting it. It was the burn that inevitably came when the frostbitten skin first began to hit air again, _that_ was the hard part.

"Where is he?" He called out.

Fiona reached the door and began to close it. "No clue. Your sister dropped of the kid before heading out with him to a bar. Why don't you ask her." He reached out and grabbed the gate to swing it back open and leave. "Promise me you'll stick around Mickey."

He heard the door click shut while his back offered her no answer because what was he going to say? Yes he'll stick around, no he can't he needs to get out –

He licked his thumb, he was bleeding again.


	14. Chapter 14

Sweat likes to roll off the skin, like its got a mind of its own or something. It _likes_ to bead and pool in every crease of fabric and make your clothing shrink a size or cling to your body like it wants to become a part of you. It's funny because sweat is a lot like alcohol. The first whiff you get smells fucking disgusting and you think that there is no way you'll ever like it, but then you get an expensive bottle and you're down a fifth before you even realize you can't walk.

With sweat, you start to realize that if it's falling off the right body and leaving sighs and staggered breaths in its wake – you kinda love it.

Ian was practically glistening under the lights of the club. His tshirt a darker gray than Mickey knew it really was and he just knew if he reached out and touched, he'd feel it - sweat.

Mandy was laughing open mouthed and looked more carefree than he could remember seeing her in years. It reminded him of how Ian and his sister were best friends. Mandy had been harboring Ian's secret so close to her chest she practically consumed it – hiding it from him and from the world. Even now, even knowing all she knows she still so loyally speaks in hushed tones.

Ian noticed him and broke into the biggest shit-eating grin he'd ever seen. He was drunk, he could already tell. Ian doesn't smile like that anymore on his own.

"Mickey!"

Mandy turned and her hair narrowly missed whipping Gallagher in the face. Her eyes were all at once foggy and clear because she'd adopted normalcy in this state long ago. "Big bro where did you come from?"

He growled and made to sit down in the empty seat next to her and not the one near Ian. "Fucking babysitting your kid."

She hiccupped. "Oh, did you have fun?" Not a trace of sarcasm could be found in her voice, it was all genuine curiosity.

"No."

Ian tipped back a drink and signaled for another before he even had the glass back on the bar.

There are a total of 6 bars in the Southside. Out of them only three are halfway decent and out of those only the Alibi actually let's you fucking drink all you want. After leaving Fiona to eat her own words Mickey checked each one of those 6 bars. He'd grown bitter enough to smash a bottle the moment he saw that Ian and his sister weren't at the Alibi and by the time he'd struck out at all of them he'd looped right around to not giving a shit anymore.

He wasn't even sure what had inspired him to walk into the no name club; and that's what it was, it wasn't a bar. Thanks a fucking ton for that false information Fiona.

Sure there was a blonde busting out of her shirt serving up that nights regrets but still it wasn't a place full of drunks sitting around and getting more drunk. It was full of people making fools out of themselves. Dancing and puking and fucking in the bathroom – he hated clubs.

_"Please come with me!" She pushed him along his spine down the street toward a half lit up neon sign._

_He moved away and caught her before she fell into a puddle. "It looks like shit and you've got awful taste anyways."_

_Stella pushed out her bottom lip in a pout and laced her arms around his neck. "Pleaseeeeee."_

_Mickey shook his head no but somehow ended up sitting on a chair watching her dance all night. He somehow paid way too much for drinks for the two of them from another pretend bartender. _

_He somehow ended up holding her hair later that night over the toilet anyways._

He let the whiskey slide down his throat and it burned. It was the cheap stuff, the stuff you drank to hurt. His fingers drummed on the counter and Ian watched them with a laser vision glare.

They locked eyes for seconds before the middle Gallagher pushed off his stool and made his way to the center of the floor. The song that was playing sent the bass vibrating through his whole body and he watched glued to every move Ian made.

One girl with long blonde hair matted with sweat dragged her hand across his shoulder blades before wrapping her other arms around his waist.

Mickey couldn't look away, couldn't blink and he felt his eyes become drier and drier by the second. Mandy glanced at him like she was watching some sort of experiment unfolding before her.

The eyes that woke up to Mickey's that morning closed and no – he had to be fucking with him.

Ian wrapped two firm hands on the girl's hips and the bruises on Mickey's began to ache. He was doing this to him, this was _for_ him.

_Stella writhed and pushed the hands off of her as the guy knotted his fist in her hair. She had tears starting to form under the heavy eyeliner and Mickey lost it because – because that look._

_The makeup showing his sister and the pleading showing Ian and he needed to do one good thing for them, even if they weren't actually there._

He practically flew from his chair feeling the whiskey starting to come back up. Mandy's body tensed and jumped in surprise and Ian opened his eyes from behind the girl - now grinding hard into his dick - just in time to see him disappear behind the bathroom door.

His vision started to blur and leave him while he white knuckled a grip on either side of the sink. Where was he? His mind rearing from the memories of Stella in New York and Ian with the girl on the floor.

"Mickey?"

Ian placed a hand on the jumping muscles beneath his shirt and Mickey turned to face him feeling his eyes beginning to water to alleviate the burning.

"What the fuck is wrong with you?" Vodka was practically oozing from Ian's skin. He smelled like his fucking dad, or Frank. "You're fucked you get that right? Look at you."

Ian chuckled and pushed forward so that Mickey's lower back arched over the sink toward the mirror. "Still jealous huh?"

He raked his nails over Ian's chest and didn't know if he was trying to hurt him or keep up with him. "You're wasted"

Their lips were inches apart and god he really did _reek_. Mickey couldn't distinguish one of them from the other anymore. And skin on wet skin just made everyone wet so why would he even need to know whose fault it was?

A tongue darted out and licked his bottom lip and Mickey really thought about how much he fucking hated clubs. How much he hated the cliché and he wanted to fuck Ian but not in this bathroom.

"What's the matter Mick?"

His hands found their way back to where they last left their mark and Mickey groaned further into Ian pushing and clawing to get some sort of friction. He just wanted to fucking light them up already. Why waste time?

With closed eyes and heavy breathing he leaned his forehead against the younger man's. "I hate you for being so broken."

_"Promise me that you'll tell me about him one day." Stella mumbled before falling asleep with her head on Mickey's lap. He'd taken off her clothes and wrapped her in a blanket so that she wouldn't smell like vomit anymore._

_"Not much to tell."_

_She scoffed at the idea, "You're a terrible liar."_


	15. Chapter 15

"Did you know that you talk in your sleep?" Ian had one elbow crooked under his head as a makeshift pillow. Mickey blinked slowly taking in the room around him.

It was his room. They were lying together tangled and naked in his bed. Ian's hair mused just enough to remind him that it had used to be a bit longer. Slowly he'd cropped it shorter – a shave at first that _screamed_ military. It's funny because it wasn't that one that made him break his own rule about not talking about gay shit like clothes and hair.

It was right before he'd taken off. Mickey realized that he couldn't tell anymore if Ian's hair was regulation short or just a new length that the red head had finally found and preferred. That scared him, scared the shit out of him actually. He'd asked him and Ian just laughed it off saying that he was becoming paranoid.

Maybe he was.

"No I don't." Mickey rolled over away from him. "My head is fucking killing me."

The bed dipped and groaned as Ian moved onto his back and stretched out his arm. Each finger wriggled outward and Mickey reflexively went to grab a hold of them. Ian's hands were calloused and he liked that about him, it assured him that he wouldn't be able to hurt him that much. Calloused hands showed experience, practical and definitive evidence that you'd been fighting your whole life.

Their clothes were strewn across the floor haphazardly and he truly didn't remember coming back here. He could feel it – the shadow of the night before – there was something tugging at his mind. His stomach felt empty and alive with things inside of him that had been woken and he could feel every spot on himself he knew Ian had touched.

He just couldn't remember.

Mickey looked at his hand and could feel the amount of pressure he was using to cripple Ian's, but he didn't even flinch. He just looked Mickey right in the eyes and offered no sign of pain.

He let go quickly and adverted his eyes. "Stop moving around you're making sick."

Ian laughed and stilled his body so much so he could have been a statue. "You shouldn't have drank so much."

"Me? That's a fucking joke right? I got there and you were hammered."

He got there and he was _gone_. A level beyond drunk before black out and after emotionally compromised –

"Who's Stella?" Ian's voice whispered the name and Mickey felt his stomach drop.

There is a very specific feeling that you get right when you know things are about to fall apart. He imagined it to be the closest equivalent to experiencing your life flash before your eyes except you don't die afterwards so it's even worse. It's being ripped open and watching all your dirty parts fall out and having a party full of kids flock to pick up the pieces.

Except you don't get the pieces back and every kid wants you to explain what each thing is and why you have it and what it's used for.

"No one." He momentarily ignored the nausea and moved faster than someone trying actively not puke ever should. "Did you get off dancing with that girl last night?"

"Will you tell me about her someday?"

_"Will you tell me about him someday?"_

Mickey pushed at Ian practically knocking him off the bed. The scar under his rib connected directly with the hit and reddened at the contact. It was a hideous scar.

"I want you to tell me why you're back." He was felt hysterical. The blankets suddenly too constricting and Ian staring wide eyed and wounded naked and used already inching forward for more. "How did you get that scar?"

Ian placed his hand on his own skin and it was tender, like a secret he wanted to keep all to himself. "I told you."

There was a piercing noise in his head telling him _this was wrong_. Something wasn't right and the minefield full of bruised and battered Ian Gallaghers that often invaded his nightmare now held red flags. Each one stuck straight up from every single body right where the scar would be.

"I don't believe you."

The words hung heavy in the air before he was left alone in his room naked and wondering which one of them really had been used and abused.

Lip held no trace of amusement in his eyes when Ian walked into the Milkovich kitchen. The coffee mug in his brother's hand seemed to almost mechanically go from table to mouth.

"Late night?"

Ian raised an eyebrow. " I guess." He moved forward to pass his chair and grab for the door.

"If you leave right now Ian – I swear, I swear to god."

It felt like ice had been poured down his back. Hearing his brother's words in a tone he knew he only saved for really serious moments, for moments when Lip had felt like he'd had the rug pulled out from him.

His brother _hated_ being wrong because he almost never was. That's the problem with being a genius. So on those rare occasions, when someone actually managed to trick the elder Gallagher, there was always a wondrous downfall.

"What's up?"

Lip threw the coffee onto the table and Ian watched it spill in slow motion while his back was thrown again the wall. The fists now practically ripping holes in his shirt, _Lip's shirt,_ twitched with spasms of anger.

There was so much on his brother's face he almost felt sorry for him. He wanted to truly apologize for all that his brother seemed to feel because he couldn't spit it out the way he was so accustomed to. He's sure Lip didn't want to slay him and that was the problem.

Lip let go of his hold and brushed his hands through his hair over and over to calm the ripples traveling through his body.

Ian snuck out the back door, the same way he'd come in.

"Bout time you got up." Lip was standing in front of Mickey's door and he tripped back over his feet into his room from the shock of it.

"What the fuck?" His heart raced in his chest. "What's got your panties in such a bunch this morning?"

"Afternoon." Lip corrected him.

Mickey scanned his room all of a sudden growing concerned that there was still some evidence of his younger brother in there. He must have seen him leave.

But there was nothing, there was always nothing left to show for it. "Well if you don't mind I'd like to go to fucking eat something." He pushed past Lip and grew agitated when he heard footsteps following him.

"Mickey—" He took a steadying breath. "There's something wrong with Ian."

He snorted. "No shit."

"You see that nasty scar he's sporting?" He didn't answer and the fucker just kept going testing his luck. "Look I know you've been fucking my brother for years now so why don't you just man up and admit –"

The crack echoed off the walls as Mickey's fist connected with Lip's face and he just _knew_ Mandy was going to have a field day with this one.

He wrapped a hand around his windpipe and waited for something, anything to stop him. But Lip didn't even try to block. He fucking took it.

"You _see_ that scar Mickey? You really fucking look at it?" his voice cracking and wheezing for air.

Mickey unwrapped his fingers slowly and took a staggering step back toward the table. His hand fell down to brace his fall and landed in something wet that had spilled.

Lip stared and it would have been a time to deliver a smirk, some sort of _I told you so_ but he didn't. Instead, he walked over and poured him a cup of coffee from a shitty looking machine – not the one Mandy had used.

At that moment exactly three things fell into place for Mickey. One – Lip was good enough for his sister. Two, he really didn't care for coffee as much as he made himself believe he did, and three—

That scar was uglier than he'd originally given it credit for.


	16. Chapter 16

_"Your name's not Lip-" blood bubbled up around Jaime's words as Ian lay counting measured breaths on the ground next to him. _

_A bomb screamed somewhere nearby. "No."_

_His chest ached at every attempted intake of air. He was afraid that he might have killed himself instead of what he'd been aiming for. Because there was something nestled inside of him and it had a beautiful smile that cracked and bled. The lips were chapped and it always whispered 'don't'. That's what Ian had been aiming for. _

_"What were you trying to accomplish?"_

_Jaime was fading fast. His head nodding in and out of death but his eyes remained glowing, clinging to every word Ian said. "I need to get back to him."_

_Another bomb – he was starting to feel cold. "J-just don't –" the word hung in the air and mocked him. Jaime gulped for one last breath and Ian reached out his hand across the mud because the spark had left his eyes now. "Don't fuck it up this time."_

The vibration against his back made him jump up from the dream. Since going to war Ian had started to look at feelings in terms of color. Pain was usually red or an oozing black – nostalgia was blue and Mickey was _indigo._

But his skin felt pink because everything hurt him, pink was his least favorite – the most sneaky and most likely to jump shades in severity.

"What?" His trembling grip on the phone betrayed his attempt to swallow down the fear that took to choking him at night.

Mickey started to laugh on the other line but cut himself off as if remembering he shouldn't feel happiness. "Stealing my best line."

"If that's your best then you've got some work to do."

He looked at the clock. It was 2:38 in the morning.

"Mmm" Mickey mumbled on the other end and trailed off into silence. Ian looked down at his boxers suddenly realizing how uncomfortable he was.

He'd fucking pissed himself.

Using his shoulder to cradle the phone against his ear he got up and ripped the sheets off his bed. "You woke me up from a good dream." He couldn't let Fiona see any of this.

"Ah the glories of your first wet dream. You've finally become a man Gallagher."

He could hear Mickey pacing on the other line. "Something like that."

"Well please spare me the details I don't need to puke again today."

Ian stilled and listened to the dead air between them. Sometimes he thinks that all Mickey wants more than anything in the world is for someone to just find him out. Because he goddamn tries to give himself away, he really does. There's an innate quality that every human has that wants to connect and wants to just fucking spill everything. Mickey wants to scream every inner thought and secret he has because Ian can see how lonely and boring it gets to only ever be able to argue about it with yourself.

He doesn't comment on the puke remark though, that battle wasn't meant for tonight.

"Can't sleep?"

"Yea no thanks to you." The words are spit out too fast. That's not what this phone call is about.

He pulls on a pair of sweatpants before picking up the now soiled laundry and beginning to tiptoe downstairs. "What's up then?"

Teeth clatter together and he hears a hiss. He probably bit his own tongue. "I'm just calling to – Jesus –" The lights are off downstairs and Ian silently thanks the world for small favors that no one is up having a fit of insomnia besides the other man on the phone. "I was just calling to see how you were doing."

He drops the sheets and frowns. "I'm fine Mick."

"Good."

"Are you oka—"

The line clicks dead and he feels like a child. He's wet his bed and been hung up on and he's missing the point of it all.

If Jimmy had never bought them a new washing machine all those years ago, Ian would have never gotten away with trying to hide the evidence of his broken psyche in the middle of the night. Their old one had been too loud, too bumpy – it would have creaked and crashed until even Carl woke up.

_"See the full moon?" Lip pointed up above where they were laying in the grass. It was Ian's 10__th__ birthday and Monica had just taken off for good the night before. "There's a face in the moon."_

_Ian squinted and followed his brother's finger. "Is he nice?"_

_"Who?"_

_He squirmed closer into Lip's side trying to really see exactly where he was looking. "The man in the moon."_

_His brother shrugged. "I don't know, maybe. Gotta be nice enough for the Sun to let him stick around though don't ya think?"_

Ian stood with the backdoor open and stared up at the sky. The moon was glowing and he thought that the Sun letting the moon come out each night even though she had to hide was one the most poignant ideas ever.

"Ian?" A switch flipped on behind him and bathed half of the kitchen in light. Fiona stared at him with a tattered sweatshirt hanging just long enough to cover the rest of her body. "What are you doing up?"

Sleep bleared her eyes but slowly she turned toward the washing machine.

"I spilled something on my sheets, didn't want to bother you to clean 'em tomorrow."

His sister wrapped her arms around herself and stared. He really hoped that they hadn't destroyed the idea of her ever having children of her own because she would really make a great mom.

"So you decided to wash them in the middle of the night?"

He nodded. "Sorry if I woke you."

Fiona chanced a step closer to him walking as if he she were afraid to spook him. "Ian –" Recognition flashing across her eyes because after all a mother _always_ knows.

And in the moments that she started to slide her body down onto the linoleum tile and weep Ian thought it might have been the most beautiful sight he'd ever seen.

He wanted to pick her up and take her back to her room and tell her it wasn't her responsibility anymore. She'd gotten him this far and he was alive and breathing and healthy and she shouldn't still wake up whenever one of them does. Her cries became more audible and he lowered himself onto his knees to crawl over to her spot on the floor.

"Fi?"

The dark tendrils of her hair hung in her face and when he got closer he realized that she wasn't an ugly crier. Almost everyone he'd ever seen cry in his life was an ugly crier, but not her. Maybe it was because she wasn't crying for herself –

The washer dinged off not long after that and still Ian found himself lying on the dirty kitchen floor he'd always known with his head in his sister's lap. He wanted to tell her to go back to bed, he could fix it, but the tears that fell from her face onto his cheeks began to mix with his own and he thought about the Sun and the Moon again –

Maybe he could just lie there for a little while longer.


	17. Chapter 17

Mickey grabbed for a beer from the fridge and crossed his arms while leaning back against the door. "So on a scale of 1 to 10 – how much do you fucking hate yourself right now?"

She shook her head to move the stray hairs falling in her face. He'd seen Mandy cry a total of 3 times in her life because the girl was a pro as swallowing it down and killing whatever it was that bubbled inside of her. Honestly, she was probably the most able to control her emotions out of the lot of them and that's saying something because she ran down Karen with a fucking car.

That's _emotionally stable_ Mandy for ya.

"You're a fucking asshole." She bit out before grabbing for his beer and storming into the living room.

A pop sounded in his shoulders as they tensed before ripping open the freezer and going for the vodka instead.

_He needed to just get out of the house. Smoke a joint and maybe connect his fist with a slab of concrete just to get the blood flowing a bit. That's all and then he could go back to sleep and stop peering through the Gallagher's open back door like the fucking psychopath he was._

_What?_

_Mickey kept himself entirely shrouded in darkness as he watched the scene unfold before him. He'd never felt more like an intruder in his entire life except that one time he kissed Ian and planted that disgusting seed of hope inside both of them._

_But notoriously, Mickey thought he was entitled to most shit. Everywhere his feet touched was his because he was breathing and he wanted it and there was no safe place in this world. Not really._

_So when he strained his eyesight against the darkness to try and get a better view of Ian curled up on his side in this sister's lap on the floor he wondered why he felt so invasive._

_He wondered that the whole time he ran home and through each dry heave over the toilet. Mandy had woken up in a cold sweat panic because now that she was a mother things like vomiting in the middle of the night were worrisome and spiked some internal hormone shit but he waved her away – It didn't matter._

The Ian Gallagher sitting in his living room right now playing with Michaela's tiny feet was not the one he'd seen last night. Not the one he'd whispered to Mandy about and made her feel guilty of ever pretending that he was '_okay'_.

Mandy walked over and nudged Ian's shoulder to hand him the beer that Mickey had been drinking. He watched as he placed the top of the bottle in his mouth and saw the way his green eyes rose to meet him. The way he took just a little bit of extra time keeping the glass at his lips and the way his body relaxed into the gulp of beer – Mickey noticed.

"Have we ever all actually sat around and just gotten hammered together?" Fiona laughed and tossed back the rest of her drink plunking it onto the wooden table full of empties before her. "I mean shit it seems sorta weird right?"

"Well that's because a Milkovich was always on the verge of murder up until late." Lip let Mandy hit him and smiled at her over their little mini me.

Ian was steadily draining his glass and he wondered if everyone was just pretending not to notice.

But Fiona placed a hand on his knee and he stuttered for a moment bringing it down dribbling some at the corner of his mouth. "Mickey ya gonna join us or you got somewhere to be?"

He'd been standing just outside of the living room. Watching, intruding – typical.

His feet shuffled along the stained carpet and there was a spot right by the edge of the couch. He couldn't remember whose blood it was, his or Ian's.

"You guys are boring as fuck."

Fiona laughed with a shrug and Lip dodged his eyes toward him while he practically folded himself in the spot on the couch opposite his sister. This whole thing was a bullshit idea.

Michaela started to make faces he could most compare to a small animal trying to take a shit. Even she wasn't into it. He remembered what Fiona had said to him the other day – about people having a higher bullshit meter than he gave them credit for. Clearly not.

Mandy pulled her daughter onto her lap and bounced her knee to make her laugh. "Well then let's play a game or something."

"A game?" Ian raised his eyebrows to an impressive height.

Lip snapped his fingers and jumped up to look through the drawers of the dresser he and Iggy used to hide drugs in.

_"Fucking hide the shit!" His dad grabbed him by the collar of his shirt nearly choking the life out of him in the process. A pound of coke was stuffed down his pants and Terry took off out the back._

_Iggy looked wildly at his younger brother because he was as much a pussy as he was a piece of shit. Mickey had to think fast and he knew it was obvious but obvious hiding spots were usually the best right?_

_The cops pounded on the door again and he shoved the drugs behind old papers in the water stained wooden drawer._

_He was 11._

It still made Mickey cringe to see Lip in his house so comfortable, so at home because he _was_. This was where Lip lived and he'd been the one sleeping there at night, the one protecting Mandy from everything creeping under her sheets and trying to steal her last bit of innocence she pretended not to have.

"Hah!" Lip whirled around a cigarette dangling from his mouth. The same one's Ian smoked and he wondered if he'd only ever started to imitate his older brother.

He held up a deck of cards and beamed as if he had a thousand dollars in his hands.

Mickey pushed back further into the cushions until he could feel the hard angles of the frame in the back of it. "You looking to play go fish?"

Mickey already didn't like where this was going. Already _hated_ that the entire Milkovich - Gallagher cluster fuck of a clan were parked in the middle of his living room. Hated that Ian hadn't said one word to him the whole night, only offered half there glances and uncomfortable shifts in silence and breaths. _Hated_ how in-tune to it he was and how much it made him want to skin himself and hang it like the curtains in the living room just to say _is this fucking enough yet?_

"Truth or dare." Ian was looking at his brother but his word were wrapping like the tendrils of a challenge around Mickey's throat. He swallowed down the rest of the vodka.

"How is that gonna work?"

Fiona got up to get another round for her and Mandy who were currently dry.

He felt his mouth opening but didn't even know what words were trying to come out. "Evens are truth and odds are dare."

Fuck.

Lip smirked and nodded in approval. "Sounds good to me."

Ian turned slowly to face him still cradling the beer that had touched Mickey's lips first. Something shimmered in his eyes and never before had he been so afraid of silence.

The first couple of rounds were stupid. Like they were twelve. Juvenile shit really. Mandy had been dared to make out with Lip, which _gasp_ - she did. They'd already created a fucking child so what the point in that was he really didn't know, plus he didn't want to see his sister sucking face more than absolutely necessary.

Fiona had to tell the truth about the best sex she'd ever had, Lip had been dared to put his leg behind his head and Mickey was dared to chug the bottle of vodka for at least 20 seconds. He kinda though that Fiona had thrown him a bone on that one because there was practically a pile of dead skin forming on the couch from all pieces of his lip he was chewing off.

"Ian –" He coughed away the prepubescent girl nerves that were bundled in his chest. Ian had picked a '2', picked truth. "How did –" _How did you get that scar Ian? _The red head transfixed his eyes on him. "How did you – _how_ did –

"How was New York Mick?"

Ian cut him off and he swears that everyone stopped breathing. All he could hear was Michaela gurgle from the safe arms of the woman who willingly brought her to life.

"What?"

Fiona cut in, "Ian c'mon –"

"No I want to know." His stomach flipped and he realized that he was drunk which was definitely the reason why the next words fell out of his mouth.

"How did you get that scar Ian?"

When wits are put against each other it's almost like a stalemate. If you're going to be ballsy enough to have them in the first place then you're already more than willing to drag them through the mud and die with them because why else do you have them except for a fucking challenge?

And he kind of half expected someone to step in and stop him. For Mandy to pull the smarter sister card and punch him in the stomach or even for Lip to decide it was a step to far, but they didn't.

The ticking of a clock started to resonate in his head and he wasn't even sure they had a clock in the house so maybe it was the ticking of the bomb he just lit.

Ian flicked his tongue over the top of the bottle just enough so that he would see and then took one last sip. "I got stabbed."

Mickey threw the cup down and Michaela started crying while he stood shifting the couch just enough so that Mandy had to grab a hold of her tighter.

"How the _fuck_ did you get that scar?"

"Don't worry Mick," Ian lowered his face so that when he looked at him he was shaded in thick eyelashes. "I was thinking of you the whole time."

_"You hurt the people you love!" Stella yelled while stomping away from him in the puddles on the street of New York. A broken heel hung from her hands. "You love people and then you push them away because you don't want anything back. You want to be alone! You're scared of everything, you're a COWARD!"_

He reared back and swung a hit that he knew would land square into that crooked jaw he'd kissed just a few days ago.

For a few moments everything was still while he hurt and pummeled and tried to kill the only thing he'd ever really loved.


	18. Chapter 18

Someone was smashing his head repeatedly against the ground. An enemy – a _threat_. God why wont they just kill him? This hurts so much more and what is that sound? _Beep, beep, beep_ –

Ian opened his eyes into slits and brought up his arm sharply to shield himself from the harsh light. Something ripped at his skin and just as quickly he stilled his movements to see an IV pulling tersely at his hand.

"Might not want to move too fast." Lip was sitting in the chair immediately next to his bed. His feet propped up and dirty on the blankets that had him nicely bound to the bed. "That looks like it might hurt."

As if the words had been an order he was suddenly aware of just how much pain he was in. It felt like he'd been hit by a truck and the worst part was that his memory was playing hide and seek with him.

"Are you with us kiddo?" Fiona placed a hand on his foot.

"Yea." His voice croaked with dryness. Mandy suddenly popped up out of nowhere with a cup of water, amazing how big her heart she tirelessly tried to hide was. "What happened?"

"Mickey Milkovich happened." Lip smirked a little. "Gotta say I thought he may have gone soft but –" He waved out his arm toward the bruises Ian could feel coloring his entire body. "Apparently not."

He'd been drinking the whole night, that's all he could really remember. In fact he's pretty sure he drank more than he talked and then truth or dare. God he was the one who'd suggested it – self-sabotaging and entirely prepared for the idea to be shot down.

But it was funny because in a sea of chaos he should have known that something as simple as a card game would be welcome. More than welcome, it would be _appreciated_ because at the end of the day – he wasn't sure any of them had experienced a childhood or the carelessness of acting as if a 'dare' was a set in stone.

_"I was thinking of you the whole time."_

His words echoed cruelly in his head and then the night went black.

"Do you remember what happened?" Fiona's voice was soothing and he closed his eyes to the sound of it.

He really hated hospitals; the fluorescent lights and doctors who were nothing more than incredibly talented used car salesmen. They could sell you a lie for all the hope you were worth and you will buy, every single time.

"It's a little fuzzy."

Mandy made a noise in her throat before crossing her arms. "Mickey beat the shit out of you that's what happened." Anger was radiating off of her.

Lip interjected. "Let's not sell him short he got in a few good hits too."

"He was too drunk to even realize that he was getting hit."

"_He_ is right here." Ian hated only one thing more than people referring to him as if he wasn't in the room and that was the feeling of dried clay on his hands. The way his life had been going of late he wouldn't be surprised if they were all going to a group pottery class after this. "And he wasn't that drunk."

He was. But the feeling of Mickey on him, in any aspect – that's not something he would ever be able to not realize. The hits had been foggy he'll admit that but his fucking soul was the thing that was aching most and that was the giveaway.

"Anyway, you've got a concussion so no sleeping tonight." Fiona opened two cheap single packages of advil and downed them all. She was probably already hung-over. "Doc says you need to stay awake so one of us needs to watch you tonight."

"We can plant him next to the baby monitor" Lip started to laugh and Mandy punched him.

Ian had 500 thoughts run through his mind. The irony in forced wakefulness during the one time he actually felt like he could sleep and now being babysat. Was he digressing? Ian Gallagher, the real life Benjamin Button. "Where's Mickey?"

Silence.

He opened his eyes braving the harshness of reality and saw Fiona step to her side a few feet. There, in the absolute most corner of the room was Mickey sitting with one leg swung over the armrest of a puke green chair. The room was quiet for the first time since he'd woken up and now the sound of spit and teeth could be properly heard chewing on a snickers bar.

Mickey used to always throw being shot in Ian's face during an argument. It was his go to card to prove he was stronger. _Well you ain't never been shot._

When they all left the hospital that night Mickey insisted that he wasn't apologizing for _one goddamn concussion _when he'd taken _two goddamn bullets _for him.

Ian didn't tell him about the bullet lodged in his thigh. It didn't bother him and it hadn't been bad enough to send him home so why bother take away Mickey's one card.

The argument over where Ian was gonna stay that night took a surprisingly long time to be resolved. Fiona wanted him _home with us in his own bed_ but Mandy insisted that she was up all night anyways and she can _look after him and Michaela it's perfect_.

Each minute that passed helped crack the tiny bit of self-control he was clinging to. Their voices growing more and more grating with each 'better idea' - It all sounded like shit to him.

"I'll watch him."

Mickey's words were oddly measured and void of any obvious opinion or care which was more unsettling then if he'd just hauled off and hit him again.

"Fuck no you're the one who put him there in the first place." Fiona looked at him as if he'd lost his mind. "Like I'm gonna trust you two morons not to start going at it again."

He wondered just exactly what way she meant that.

Lip was obviously getting tired and bored with the whole situation. Mandy had snuck out to feed Michaela and it was almost 1 in the morning. They didn't all need to be up. "I don't even care at this point just let Mickey watch him."

So it was settled that Fiona was going to knock herself out with one of Frank's left behind xanax and Lip was going to fuck Mandy. He didn't actually say it but they knew.

For two full hours Ian and Mickey sat in silence. He'd been sprawled on the couch and Mickey had been chain smoking on the chair near the window. Each time he stubbed one out Ian thought _this is it, this is when he lights the place on fire and kills us._ But he never did, he just lit up another one after the next.

A shoe connected with his head and he jolted awake.

"What the fuck Mick?"

"Wake up." He deadpanned.

Ian rubbed at his now throbbing temple and his vision blurred in and out for a second. "I'm pretty sure you're not supposed to hit someone when they already have a concussion."

"You're not supposed to fall asleep either."

Another hour passed and he wanted to talk. Wanted to maybe bring up the night before and take a sharpie to outline the bruises because they could be his map of where this whole thing was going – maybe show him what was waiting.

Plot twist; not one person makes it out of life alive.

Mickey stood up and raised his arms over his head stretching over both sides. He was fucking beautiful.

"Let's go."

"Go where?"

It was almost 4 now. He couldn't think, he wished they were wearing less clothes and he really wished he could spit it out, just come clean.

"I got an idea."

And as Ian walked with him five miles across town to the only motel worth checking into he'd wondered when things changed. When they'd decided that tearing each other apart was now only second to making sure the seams were securely in place.

Because he knew what this was and he saw the way Mickey walked just a little bit ahead of him as if each step was measured and counted.

Two steps forward, three steps back. It worked if one of them was always lagging behind.


	19. Chapter 19

The room was shitty and only cost them $30 for the night. Mickey had been so fucking worried that Ian would ask him what they were doing there and he wouldn't have even half of an answer.

But he didn't, because as much as they'd always been staring at each other on opposite sides of a glass wall; that thing was fucking cracked and their words registered with perfect clarity.

He wanted to sleep with him. He wanted them to fuck until there was nothing left to think. He wanted them to _destroy_ each other in the way that made it okay because they'd want it and pant out whispered _please harder more._

"What are you thinking about?"

Ian stared at him with his head tilted just enough to the side that he looked thoughtful instead of stupid.

Dark purple bruises were arched around his eyebrow and his lip was cracked with dried blood. It was a sensation that Mickey never really got over, seeing the power of his own hand and feeling the evidential ache. Each pulse of his own knuckles knocking on his mind asking him '_do you see what you've done?'_

He ground his teeth against each other and felt his jaw try to lock against his mind. It tried to protect him from what was about to punch out of his mouth but he just couldn't. "You walked away just as many times as I did."

Ian's arms that were tightly crossed against his own chest trying to keep himself together began to fall to his side. "What?"

His actions were jerky. When he sat it was with too much force, too close to the edge of the bed and he was gonna fucking slide right off. "You walked away every time I did. I know you think it was me but you –" He threw up an accusing finger in Ian's direction for emphasis. "You did it too."

"I never said that you –"

"And when it mattered most!" Mickey felt his voice rise like he cared. He cared so much. "When I basically told you. When I was _trying_ to figure out a way to just fucking spit it out." He clapped his hands together and it echoed uncannily loud in the small room. " Gone. Just like that."

Ian didn't move, didn't go to sit next to him – barely even twitched. "Yet here we are."

"Here we fucking are." Mickey spat back. "Because _you_ called me. You dragged me out of bed every night to listen to you talk about god knows what. Not even making sense half the time. Then Mandy and Lip have a kid!" He knew his knee was jumping up and down. The room rattling with _a thump thump thump_ against the carpet. "And my dad died which –" A harsh laugh escaped him, "we can all be thankful for but –"

"But what?"

Mickey slowly raised his head that had fallen into his hands during the fucking rant that was just falling out of his mouth. That taste of regret and fear and bile all beginning to mix again in the back of his throat.

"But I don't fucking know! I'm puking all the time, I can't stop myself from wanting to reach out and just.." He heard a crunch in his head and wondered if he'd chipped his own tooth.

Ian walked over and stood between his open legs, too close. Too fucking close. "You want to kill me."

He looked up. The man before him had aged. He really had. He still looked young and perfect despite the blemishes that were always being put on him because he never fought back – but he was older. And Mickey could say that because he wasn't some bullshit bitch that didn't notice how someone's eyes were fucking _everything_. It wasn't dumb if it was true. Because eyes ever fucking lie and that's why he adverts them. Always.

"I want to save you."

A knock on the door startled both of them. Ian immediately tensed and Mickey wondered just how much the red head had scene in war, how much he was keeping locked away inside.

"Who is that?" Mickey could practically see the workings going on inside his head. The plans for how he would escape the room if necessary. How he'd take down who ever came through the door. It made him choke.

Another knock, half wild eyes. Mickey swallowed down his pride before physically moving the man before him and standing up. "I ordered room service when you were in the bathroom. I'm fucking starving."

The food was shit. He kinda knew it would be. And Mickey is not a romantic; he's just easily haunted by regrets.

_"You gonna tell me about it?" Stella stood in the doorway of the apartment, arms crossed, hair wet from the shower._

_Mickey had a pile full of stubbed out cigarettes before him and another one hanging from his lips. "About what?"_

_She shifted with anger and put on her no bullshit face. "I make one fucking comment about how it'd be nice if we had room service and you punch a hole in the wall." He focused on his cigarette again. "So you gonna talk about it?"_

_"No."_

"Do you ever feel crazy?" Ian's voice was soft. He kept his eyes focused intently on the half eaten bagel in his hands.

"Yes."

Ian shifted and his muscles bunched and clenched with each motion. "I stabbed myself."

The words were whispered and taken hostage by the space around them. It was as if the room itself didn't want to hear it – wanted to push it away like a bad memory. And suddenly Mickey felt incredibly bad for the room. For every horrifying thing that invaded her ears against her will. It was a tragedy.

"Yea I know."

Ian looked on wide-eyed. "I wasn't trying to kill myself." A crumb hung at the corner of his mouth and he wanted to say something. Wanted to say to wipe it the fuck off because it looked stupid and it was gross but he didn't. "I swear Mick I'm not like –" He practically coughed the rest of the sentence out. "A _suicide_ risk or some shit like that."

Mickey looked on finding it kinda strange at the way Ian was shaking. A red flush climbed up his neck and he knew it only belonged there after they'd both gotten off or because of a fury greater than god.

"I never said that."

"No but you're _thinking_ it." He huffed and took another bite of the food. "I wanted to just kill the thing inside of me. I wanted to kill you and how you'd grown to take up every fucking part of me like I had never been myself in the first place and I thought – god I fucking worried that –"

Mickey reached for a cigarette. "You worried that you had been fucking tricked into this whole thing." Ian stayed silent, waiting for the rest of the confession like some hopped up boy in church. "Like you didn't know if you wanted it or if it wanted you and that – that was a big difference."

It was almost 6 in the morning. Both alpha females in their homes would be waking up soon to take care of the younger kids and even though they were adults – adult men sick with grief and love and lust – they would be sought out soon.

"I didn't live alone in New York." His voice hitched with something close to what he could consider despair. "There was a girl – Stella."


	20. Chapter 20

_He had cum on his hands, just a little bit but it was a little too much. _

_Mickey stumbled around on the street and crashed into a brick wall that stung his shoulder with the connection it made. "Fuck." _

_Everything reminded him of Ian – the wall doing nothing but drudging up the memory of them fucking against one once. He smashed his shoulder harder into again to try and just grind it down to the bone. Smash – a hiss of pain – smash – he was getting dizzy._

_"If you're trying to kill yourself it's gonna take a while." A voice echoed out at him. "No one has ever died from a broken bone right? Gotta go for something more vital like an artery or shit –" He could hear the voice waver in pain; the most unmistakable sound. "The heart. People die from broken hearts all the time right? It's cliché but kinda true. A bullet to the heart and you're dead no matter what."_

_He waited to see if she would continue and prayed that she wouldn't. But that whimper in her voice, that shake around each breath she was obviously gasping for – Mickey couldn't walk away._

_"What the fuck are you doing out here?"_

_A tinkling laugh became swallowed up by a cough. "I could ask you the same thing." Her face moved so that the light from the streetlamp cast a harsh clarity over her bloody features. "So who broke your heart?"_

"What happened to her?" Ian was staring at him with big eyes soaking up every word.

Mickey blew smoke out of his nose and shrugged. "She had real shitty luck. Got fucked up and left in the alley. Guy probably thought she'd just lay down and die there."

"But she didn't."

"She didn't."

Ian flexed his hand as if he was going to reach out and take the cigarette from his mouth but he didn't. "What were _you_ doing there Mick?"

He had been running. Running from Chicago, running from the guy still stuck on his hands and running from the images of the man before him dying with his name on his lips.

Ian sighed and nodded. "So what happened next?"

_She had green eyes, just like his – curly hair, brown not red. Dark smudges around her eyes trying to make her look older – just like her. "What's your name?"_

_"Stella."_

_"That's a stupid ass name. Don't tell me you're a fucking hooker."_

_She made a face of genuine horror and disgust at him before pushing herself up against the wall. Her legs were wobbling and bloody, shit she was really hurt._

_"Fuck you very much you'd like that wouldn't you."_

_He couldn't help the laugh that escaped his lips. "Not really actually." _

_Stella began inching her way over to him using the wall for support. And Mickey thought it was actually a little admirable, how much she was trying to not let on about the pain stabbing at her body. "Don't swing my way right?" She was only a few feet from him now._

_It had only been a few weeks since he'd skipped town and the fear of being a fag in the Southside still strummed high in his veins. "The fuck? Who do you think you are bitch?"_

_She stood a little taller now and Mickey saw Mandy's tenacity mix with Ian's confidence. "First off don't call me a bitch." Stella pushed out her face and narrowed her eyes at his hands. "Secondly, if you don't want people to know you like cock then you might want to wash the jizz off your hands."_

Ian let out a howl and it made him jump. "I like her."

He kicked at his leg. "I figured you would she was basically the female version of you." Mickey chanced a look into his eyes and dropped his voice down to more of a whisper. "Always calling me out on my shit."

"Yea but you wouldn't hit a girl."

For the first time in his entire life, Mickey could feel his body betray him in a way it never had before. It turned red.

The heat climbed up into face and clawed at his eyes screaming at him to _look at his face, look at his lip look at those bruises._ He wouldn't hit a girl, but he hit Ian.

What does that say about him?

"Hey I was kidding." Ian offered a smile and the move made his lip crack again to allow a fresh droplet of wet glistening blood.

"She'd been raped." He cleared his throat and look back down at his hands. "Some bastard drug dealer she was mixed up with took it as payment and I beat the shit out of him for her."

Ian stayed quiet.

He didn't mention that he'd broken the guys legs, cracked his skull against the pavement and kicked him enough times in the balls that there was _no_ way he was reproducing. And he didn't tell him that the fact that Stella had a bit of a crooked jaw made the whole thing worse, or that she stupidly wore the same perfume as his sister. Didn't tell him that he was the worst kind of person, the one run entirely by nostalgia and ghosts that he shackled to himself because he didn't like to sleep alone.

They didn't say much while they walked home. The sun had started to rise and it felt like something had shifted between them.

They hadn't fucked but they _ached_ to. They had talked and they'd been _terrified_ to. It made his head swim.

"So what happened to her?" Mickey turned and saw that Ian kept his gaze fixated ahead of them. "Stella I mean."

"She had no where to go and I didn't have enough money to pay for a place myself so we moved into this shitty little apartment together."

He's sure that Gallagher was shocked and just itching to ask more questions. He'd always loved asking questions and wanting _every_ detail because _life is too short Mick just spit it out_.

"Did you tell her about me?"

A dog started barking somewhere close by. There had been a dog living outside his apartment building that no one gave a shit about and he wondered if anyone had been feeding it since he left.

Probably not, it was probably dead. Probably his fault.

"Yea I did."

Ian didn't ask for an explanation. Something about not being forgotten, it seemed to be enough for him. And it was funny because Mickey thought about that. He thought about the saying that 'you don't know what you have until it's gone' and how stupid it was. Because everyone kinda knows or they wouldn't run away and test their theory in the first place. It wasn't about not knowing, it was about not _believing_.

Ian didn't believe that he'd be remembered or even missed and Mickey didn't believe that he should be. So they were assholes. They were liars and thieves and nonbelievers running in opposite directions for the purpose of wanting to end up back together in the same spot with something more solid to stand on.

And that, _that_ was stupid.

"Did you tell her that you were coming back here?"

Mickey tripped over his own feet and cursed at the raised crack in the sidewalk. "Nah – she wouldn't care."

"No?"

A phone started to vibrate and he looked to Ian's pocket knowing that it was most likely the bat signal. Fiona checking to make sure he was still breathing, that Mickey hadn't made him sick from the inside out.

"Yea she's kinda outta commission right now."

_"I don't think I'll live past 25." He passed her a cigarette and she wrinkled her nose in attempted disgust. She was trying to quit._

_"You'll live. You got too many things you need to say and fix." She grabbed for the cigarette and huffed out a sound of defeat. "I wont make it another 5 years."_

Mickey smiled a little to himself at the memory. She had always been the smarter one.


	21. Chapter 21

When they walked through the door of his house and not Ian's he didn't ask why. When Ian got down on his knees so that he was eyes level with Michaela and let her reach out to touch his face – he stayed quite. He didn't make a remark, didn't even walk over to stand next to him.

Mickey remembers being a little kid and listening to his dad scream about him and Mandy and their brothers. About how they ruined and destroyed everything they touched. Then Terry raised them all to do just that – to be hard and violent and touch with force. Every hand was supposed to be propelled by a punch.

And part of him had hardwired this into children too. Because they were small and uncoordinated and they would pull your hair and cause you pain.

It's ironic though, because he learned that children are the prototype of perfection. An entire mind is given to them without clogged cells and neurons snapping in anger. Every touch is gentle, calm and precise. It will burn you but only because of the innocence and forgiveness inside of them – it makes him sick.

"I wish I'd never gone Mick." Ian's throat sounded small, like Mickey could hear it closing up in real time. "I don't want to feel like this." Michaela's eyes went big and she reached with more conviction now, tracing every bruise on his face. "Fuck she really has your eyes."

He was crying. Mickey knew that he was crying. He couldn't see his face but the choking on his words – the vulnerability at what he felt. Mickey knew it.

"You wanna just go to bed?" He felt like an asshole. Words just escaped his mind and always the one thing that had worked when Mandy was little and upset was his whispered _go to bed it will be better in the morning_.

But Ian was a grown man who had seen too much and going to bed wouldn't help. Mickey had gone to bed 5 years in a row, 1,825 days of restless nightmares and feeble distractions and the mornings were never anything but too bright.

Ian's back rippled while he unfurled from his spot by the crib and turned around. His eyes glistened and tears were now _pouring_ down his face.

"I fucking hate looking at her." He nodded his head as if this was a good thing, as if the words falling out of his mouth didn't land on Mickey's skin like acid. "She looks like you. I can only see you and the day –" He hiccupped becoming more and more hysterical. "The day that I knew that this had to be my karma I just –"

Mandy walked out of her room rubbing at her eyes and flipping on the light. "Mickey what the fuck do you know what time it –" She stopped short at the sight of Ian.

Their bodies formed a sort of triangle around the room. Empty beer bottles from the night before still littered the table and Michaela was plopped down in her safe zone right outside of it all. The Bermuda Triangle, that's what the fuck they were. The biggest mystery with no evidence to prove their power but still, they would devour you and they wont even apologize for it.

"Ian?" Lip now emerged and was stopped only by Mandy's hand on his stomach.

Ian kept his eyes focused on Mickey. "I killed her Mick. This little girl because, because I _had to." _

He swallowed slow feeling the eyes of both Lip and Mandy on him now as well. "Okay."

"But it didn't matter because the bomb fucking went off anyway and they don't tell you that." Ian's arms started to shake more than Mickey had ever seen before. "They don't tell you that you're not gonna win the battle or the war because there is always going to be a little girl strapped to a bomb somewhere."

Someone else started to cry and he couldn't for the life of him figure out which one of them it was. The Bermuda Triangle, it spares no one.

"Stella's in a coma." He didn't know what else to say. "She's never waking up and it's my fault. I couldn't save her."

Ian's eyes practically rolled back into his head as another round of violent sobs grappled his body. It wasn't the reaction Mickey had been aiming for – fuck he just wanted him to stop crying because he could remember being on the side of the road driving here. The puddle of vomit and his inability to just get one more breath and _hoping_ he wouldn't have to.

"I'm – I'm sorry Mick –" Ian was losing this battle. It was finally clear to him which one of them was losing. And it had never been a battle between them. It had always been a fucking battle of them against themselves.

Ian's words started to trickle back into his memory and he felt a chill run through his body. "You know you can't die from that?"

Another failed intake of a full breath wheezed. "What?"

Mickey continued feeling almost high as the words rolled of his tongue. "That moment, when you can't get any air and you choke and choke and god it's like you're almost there and you think that if you just wait a few more seconds you'll finally just stop breathing."

_"Why do you always do that?" Stella grabbed back her piece of toast that Mickey had snagged and taken a bite out of. "Why don't you just get your own?"_

_He smirked and swallowed down the bite. "Because I'm a selfish asshole what can I say."_

_She scoffed and shook her head. "Yea you wish."_

_"What's that supposed to mean?"_

_"It means you keep trying to make me think that you're this awful person with all these flaws." The plates rattled on the table as she let her fist fall. "One day you're gonna be in a situation and you're gonna realize how unselfish you really fucking are." He brushed her off before standing to leave for work. "Better be ready for it Mickey because it's gonna hurt when it happens."_

Ian's eyes closed and he crumpled to the floor but with it was a huge, gasping, full of oxygen breath. And Mickey knew he got it, knew he remembered that the words he'd spoken were merely Ian's mirrored back to him and he finally fucking _breathed_.

Lip raced from where he had been rooted in his spot and was behind Ian in seconds. His arms wrapped tightly around his chest and he held him solidly together while more cries wracked his body. The sounds screamed from his mouth making Mickey actually wince in pain. Because it was pain. True pain that is almost never seen. Everyone likes to hold it together, even when they don't they do.

It is one of the more rare things in the world to see someone completely fall apart and that's why it is so violent when it happens.

He could remember walking out on Stella that day. It was the last conversation they'd had. It was ironic because to him it had only made him feel more selfish – for walking out because he didn't want to hear her prattle on and then sitting around _selfishly_ wanting to hear her voice again.

Selfish.

But in this moment he thinks he's never wanted anything more in his life than to touch Ian Gallagher. To wrap him up and run away and put him back together with glue and duct tape and keep him hostage from the rest of the world.

So when he didn't, when he let Lip hold his younger brother instead Mickey _almost_ laughed. Almost laughed because he could feel his heart physically shatter into a thousand pieces of mismatched jagged edges.

When Mickey realized how unselfish he was it hurt – it really really did.


	22. Chapter 22

For the next two weeks Ian slept. His only waking moments were for food and taking a piss and then right back to bed. It felt like a fevered dream – the entire past 5 years of his life. Coming back had simply served as the degree that tipped the scales from _running a little hot_ to _you're gonna fry your brain._

For two weeks he slept and sweat it out.

Fiona, Lip and Mandy were ghosts flitting in and out of his room. Checking on his temperature – he'd actually caught a cold. Carl stayed on the couch to give him space and Debbie tearfully apologized over a cup of tea that she shoved into his hands. He wasn't sure what she was apologizing for really, because he's pretty sure he's the one who made a mistake. He couldn't fault her for feeling the consequences of it.

Mickey didn't show up once. Ian heard his voice but he was never sure whether or not he was dreaming. Sometimes he thought he was in the hallway talking to Fiona in hushed whispers on the verge of coming in. Other times he thought he was lying next to him. It was hard to tell what was real during that time.

"I'm sorry for what I said about Michaela." Ian lay on his side while Mandy sat in a chair next to his bed. "I didn't mean that I hate her because I love her it's just hard for me—"

She shook her head and shushed him. "I understand. She looks like him." She shrugged and laughed hollowly. "I mean I _named_ her after him. I was kinda asking for it."

Mandy ran her fingers through his hair soothingly and told him a story of her and Mickey stealing a turkey for thanksgiving 15 years back. He fell asleep to images of a young black haired boy smiling and laughing just before he'd get back home and realize that no one was going to cook the food for him anyway.

When Ian opened his eyes Lip was staring down at him. "Jesus Christ!" He jolted and nearly hit his brother in the face.

He laughed, "Good to see your basic motor functions are still working because you had me worried."

Ian flipped him off and reached down to untangle the sheets now tightly wound around his feet. They smelled clean and he wondered when someone had snuck in and washed them.

"Don't you have better things to do then watch me sleep?"

Lip plopped down onto Carl's vacant bed. "Not really. Mickey took Michaela for the day and Mandy decided that she wants to try bonding with Fiona again. I tried to tell her Fiona doesn't bond but I think they both need to get out of the house so we'll see."

Ian sat leaning his elbows on his thighs while brushing a hand through his hair. He really needed to shower. "You trust Mickey with your baby?"

"She's his niece." He pulled out a cigarette. "Yours too."

Ian nodded and stood hearing every underused bone in his body crack. "I'm gonna shower."

"Yea you should you reek." Lip kicked at him on his way out the door. "You should go see him."

He peeled off his shirt and grabbed for a clean towel. "See who?"

"Mickey." His brother puffed out a stream of smoke. "He's been here practically everyday." Ash fell off onto the carpet. "You really think I was the one who took all that time to make those nasty pizza bagel bite things you love?"

His heart stuttered and he tried to remember his waking hours. Tried to think about all the tidbits of conversations he'd had with Fiona when she came up with a new plate of food.

_"He said he'd be back tomorrow. Doesn't want to watch you sleep but he'll come check up anyways."_

He remembered Fiona's words – fogged and only half hitting his consciousness. He figured she had been talking about Lip. Looking back he realized that he'd most likely been mumbling Mickey's name in his sleep. Hoping that he'd still be around when he woke up. It never occurred to him that Mickey might have been wondering the same thing about him.

—-

"Who ever decided that the park was a good place for kids?" Mickey quirked his eye at Michaela and cringed while she tried to put sand in her mouth. "It's fucking gross think about all the piss and shit that you're probably sitting in."

The woman next to him scoffed and shook her head in disapproval. She yanked at the hand of her little boy and took them far away from his bad mouth and menacing behavior that no doubt was going to seep out and infect playtime.

"What?" He yelled back at her, "they don't have good immune systems yet I'm just trying make sure she doesn't get fucking scarlett fever!"

"I'm pretty sure you can't get scarlett fever anymore." Mickey spun in shock at the sound of Ian's voice. "Or I mean you gotta have really bad luck to still get it these days."

"Then you should take her away from me because I'm probably giving it to her myself."

Michaela started to smile and gurgle at the sight of Ian. He thought it was kind of sad, how much she wanted to see him and how much it hurt him that he didn't want to. Ian smiled weakly and sat down next to him on the little cement wall.

They definitely looked like a gay couple.

Mickey eyed the man next to him up and down. He had showered and changed out of his fever soaked clothes that even he thought were starting to get ripe. The circles under his eyes were still darker than normal but they looked less sunken. Everyone always talks about the calm before the storm so what do you call what you're left with after it? The wreckage?

"Thanks for the pizza rolls."

Mickey reached out and batted away more sand from Michaela. "Yea whatever." A smile tugged at the corner of Ian's mouth and he let himself enjoy it.

"I should have stayed." Ian squinted against the sun and look over at the swing set off to their right.

"I should have given you a reason to."

They stayed quiet focusing on breathing and letting the sun warm their skin. Michaela scooted over to grab a hold of Mickey's leg and he reached down to pick her up.

Ian chanced a look. "Do you think she'll remember any of this? Of me being this way to her?"

"Nah." He shook his head and bounced his knee feeling dumb doing so. It was incredible what came naturally to you around a baby. "That is of course if you manage to get the stick out of your ass about the whole eye thing."

A laugh bubbled up from his throat and Mickey twitched in surprise. It sounded almost real, almost like actual happiness and it made him want to cry because he hadn't realized just how wrong everything had been up until this moment.

He thought of a hairline crack – it sounds benign and pansy, something so thin and nonthreatening because it's a _hairline_. But every time you pick up a glass and it shatters in your hands sending shards all over the floor you think _how the fuck is this possible I barely touched it_.

And it's always because of a hairline crack hiding in that damn glass. Going unnoticed, never taken seriously – until you touch it and it's over.

But he guessed it's a good thing because it takes the glass breaking to realize that you need to get new ones and you stop fucking around and putting it off. There can't be a _maybe I'll go tomorrow_ if you've got nothing left to drink out of today.

"You going back to New York?"

"Yea." Mickey licked his lip while he looked at him. "You coming with me?"

A kid fell off of his bike and started crying. He's pretty sure it was the same kid that mother dragged away from him earlier.

"Yea."


	23. Chapter 23

_**The next chapter is the last one. Thanks for reading everyone :)**_

"I don't like this." Fiona mumbled while darting her eyes up to him. She threw down another folded shirt onto his bed. "I just got you back."

Ian smiled while shoving the clothes into a duffle bag. He didn't have many things to pack – they'd never been a possessions heavy family. "You're not losing me Fiona."

_"Do you ever miss your mom?" Ian lay practically naked next to Mickey staring up at the ceiling. _

_"I don't know. Do you?"_

_He sighed and reached out for his new, pretty little white pills. Prozac. Ian's new best friend. He'd practically folded in on himself when the doctor prescribed it. Vehemently denying the need because he had been doing much better. The past few weeks were like the fog had thinned._

_But she had looked at him and very seriously asked why he'd want to walk around in a fog at all. Thick or thin it still made it hard to see and it was not bad to need a little bit of help. He was not his mother._

_Mickey and him got into a fight that night. Screaming and bitter smirks accompanied by harsh words that are harder to not say than you'd originally think. It's so easy to want to hurt someone when they're hurting you._

_It was only after Mickey started popping the pills into his own mouth to prove his point that Ian agreed to take them. Promised – so long as he promised to never ask if he did._

_"I think I might have at some point." He glanced over to see that Mickey was watching him intently. "I used to call Fiona mom by accident." _

_"I don't think that's an accident."_

She sat down and stared up at him. "When did you get so tall?"

"When did you get so sentimental?"

Fiona shoved at him and laughed. "Shut up. I'm not sentimental." He ducked away from her reach. "I do however wanna know when the Milkovich's managed to sneak in and steal my boys."

Ian smiled and grabbed the last piece of clothing from his dresser near by. It was Mickey's sweatshirt, probably the only one he owned. "We've just got bad taste."

His sister shook her head and nearly spat out a laugh. "I don't know. Looking back I think that they're the ones with bad taste. Had to stick around waiting for you two losers to get your shit together."

Footsteps could be heard skipping the stairs two at a time. Carl.

"Yea, you're probably right."

Part of him had wanted to not tell anyone he was leaving. He didn't want to answer questions, didn't want to make things bigger or smaller than they really were.

It's an impossible thing to try and form words that aptly describe the ache that clenches and relieves your heart. The truest thing you'll ever feel will be the only thing you'll never be able to explain. It seemed a bit unfair.

_"What happened to Stella?" Ian could feel Mickey's body tense under the sheet haphazardly thrown over them. _

_"Someone caught up to her and I wasn't there." He shifted and looked away from him quickly speaking the rest of the words to his shoulder. "She had been mixed up in all kinds of stuff and was trying to start over but fuck all if everyone she owed money to cared." _

_Ian wanted to reach out and smooth away the line creased between his eyes. "That's not your fault you couldn't have known." _

_He huffed out a laugh. "I knew. I knew she had a target on her and still –"_

_They sat in silence for another 20 minutes and Ian could feel his eyelids becoming weights. They hadn't slept yet – had been too busy doing better things. _

_"She was going out to get me beer." Mickey's words caught him by surprise. "I found her just two fucking blocks from the apartment." Ian turned and saw a film of tears just about to spill out from his eyes. "She still had the box in her hands."_

On the drive to New York he thought about a lot of things. He thought about the way Fiona clung to him before letting go and how Lip didn't fail him with a mushy goodbye but threw him a box of condoms with a smirk in Mickey's direction instead. How the faux leather seats in Mickey's car were cracked and that he's sure it was stolen. He wondered about Debbie and Carl and how he wasn't even sure if they knew what happened. How Mandy smiled sadly with the baby blue eyed girl in her arms – saying goodbye once again to two of the most important people in her life.

But mostly, he thought about how he didn't know what Mickey's favorite beer was. Didn't know for the life of him what Stella could have possibly had clutched in her grasp.

"I wanna meet her."

Mickey looked over to Ian with his long legs kicked up on the dashboard. He had to push his chair all the way back to even attempt it.

"Who?" They were only 30 minutes outside of the city.

Ian handed him the cigarette dangling from his mouth. "Stella."

_"I want to meet him."_

_Mickey threw a towel at the naked and dripping wet body in front of him. "Put some clothes on whore I don't wanna see that."_

_Stella put her hands on her hips. "Did you hear me? I want to meet him."_

_"Fucking who?"_

_She pulled the towel up around her but still let the back hang open. "Oh don't give me that shit you know damn well who. I want to meet Ian." He stared back blankly and felt his intestines twist at the name. _

_"You'll never meet him. Give it up."_

Mickey's pretty sure that Stella had no family. He never asked her but she would make these little quips sometimes – about Mandy and Ian and how he was an asshole for the whole thing. Something only someone with no one would say.

And when he found her and dragged her blood soaked body all the way to the hospital, he'd never once considered that she might not die. Because he didn't know what the law said about who the fuck mattered in a situation like that. He didn't know that those doctors would save her body but not her mind and that she would lay in a bed mechanically breathing until someone said _just let her go_.

But there was no someone. He was that someone and he, typically, didn't count.

A car cut them off and he smashed his hand into the steering wheel to let out a screeching blare of the horn. Ian's body stiffened and he immediately felt like an asshole.

The duct tape was holding and the glue was drying – slowly. But it _was_ drying. And Mickey would go out and find better fucking glue if Ian started to unravel because what other choice did he have really? There is a certain point where you realize that this is it.

Mickey flicked his tongue over his lip and took an inhale of nicotine. Ian reached out silently asking for it back.

And when their fingers grazed he thought that this whole idea of love must have been a mistake in the human psyche. Because there was no way that this was safe, there was no way that this was _healthy_.

They smoked in silence for the rest of the ride with Ian occasionally huffing out his disapproval at whatever song came on the radio. Mickey didn't need to answer his question about wanting to see Stella.

When they pulled up to the hospital parking lot Ian didn't act surprised. He didn't sympathetically put a hand on Mickey's shoulder or ask if he was okay. Because Ian was a soldier and Mickey knew, _knew_ deep down inside that Ian knew exactly why they were there.

One last goodbye.


	24. Chapter 24

In the ninth grade Ian went on a field trip to jail. The night before he had smoked a joint with Lip and he remembers so vividly being convinced that he wouldn't be walking back out of that jail. Like the dogs would come out of nowhere and attack him ready to sniff out any trace evidence of the pot still stuck on his clothes.

He thinks that visiting hospitals are a lot like visiting jail. There's a wisp of a feeling that curls around you and tells you that you're never leaving. They're gonna figure you out and show you all the ways you're sick.

He wondered if the nurses could tell he recently had a concussion.

Mickey moved with a sort of robotic like accuracy that Ian had never seen before. It was funny because Mickey always liked to pretend that he wasn't run entirely by his emotions, but he was. Every jerky action, every too quick word, every fuck and moan and tear and hit – it was all propelled by his intense inability to not feel.

But this was something new, like a map memorized or a scenario rehearsed. He wondered how many times he'd walked these halls up to her room only to be shooed away.

"Do you think –" Ian cleared his throat while following Mickey at steady pace around the winding hallways. "Do you think she would have liked me?"

Mickey laughed. "Are you kidding? She was fucking obsessed with you." A nurse shot them a look no doubt because of the swearing and because they looked,_out of place_.

The looked like they belonged somewhere else, like strangers treading on someone's 'safe space'. Ian thought that it was ironic because everyone is just a stranger in a new place – at the end of the day they're all only defined by who they're roaming with. Family is relative to reality and reality is relative to, well, everything.

"I wish I could have known her."

Mickey stopped short and he nearly bumped into him. "This is it."

They stood outside of the closed door with faded numbers hanging almost crooked. He couldn't tell if it was an artistic choice of italics or just another mistake.

—-

The room seemed smaller with Ian there beside him. It also seemed quieter and louder at the same time. Each machine connected to her seemingly lifeless body echoed and reverberated like a mocking reminder of inadequacy. An inadequacy to breathe on her own and most importantly his inadequacy of being able to let her die.

Ian looked at him before scooting past and walking closer to her bed.

"She sorta looks like Mandy." He turned and Mickey could feel his heart squeeze, tunnel vision impending all sides of sight. "That was it wasn't it. When you first saw her. She reminded you of Mandy."

A strain started to wrap around his throat. "She sorta just looks dead to me now." He could feel the words he wanted to say and how they fucking _tore_ at him. Because it was awful – it was fucking horrendous that the thought even crossed his mind let alone took root and grew. "I wish I could just kill her – just pull the plug but I can't."

Ian furrowed his brows and straightened his posture. "It's okay Mick."

"I literally fucking can't." He punched into the mattress near her legs. "It's the last thing I should be able to do for this bitch who wormed her way into my life and made it comfortable. She made it seem like some happy thing to be in the same room as me and it pissed me off because it wasn't true. It was her own fucking fantasy world of me being some kind of – fucking _savior_." Tears had finally spilled over and he wipe furiously at them. "Like I was worth the time and still I can't even kill her – I can't even fucking kill her."

The words drifted into nothingness around them and nothing happened. No bolt of lightning came down and hit Mickey for wishing death upon one of the best friends he'd probably ever have. Ian didn't spit on him in disgust and still the machine beeped on showing him that saying the words weren't enough.

A calm settled over the room and Mickey dragged his hand over his face. His tattooed knuckles suddenly seemed poignant, fuck u-up. Everything you've ever loved will fuck u-up and wear a smile while doing so. Because it loves you back and that's why it's hurting in the first place. A perfect catch-22. You have to love to feel pain but must feel pain first to know you've ever loved.

He walked out of the room first, feeling the weight of the body he'd always dragged around stumble. Ian lingered next to Stella's bed and he didn't need to turn around to acknowledge it or give him his own sick approval.

The steady beep of the machine shackling her to this fucking world, this god damn hospital — he had to count his breaths so that he didn't stop breathing also.

_"If you had to pick one of your senses to lose which one would it be?"_

_He popped the cap of the beer off and threw it into the sink. "Easy — smell."_

_She looked at him dumbfounded. "But if you can't smell then you can taste either. That's stupid you just willingly gave up two when you only needed to do one."_

_"Yea but there's no way that I want to be able to smell something and not taste it. That's just —" he took a sip. "'Masochistic."_

_Stella clapped her hands and hollered. "Woo! Plus one for vocab!"_

_"Fuck off." But a smile tugged at his lips. "Alright what would you give up?"_

_"My brain so I wouldn't have to think."_

_He rolled his eyes, "that's not a sense."_

_"Says the idiot who gave up two."_

A nurse walked by and smiled at him. Mickey kept counting breaths as the door to Stella's tomb stayed closed. 1…2….3…

A soft click sounded and when Ian walked out calmly passing him Mickey followed letting the now steady sound of a flat line seeping from her room fade into his subconscious.

He wanted to say something – to thank him, to ask if they were going to hell. But truly they probably already were toting first class tickets so what was the point in caring about sin now?

When they got there, Ian ran his hands over almost every part of Mickey's apartment. He'd been shocked that it _was_ still his apartment. It had only been a month since that first phone call but still – he figured someone would have needed a place to crash more than he needed to hang onto the idea of ever coming back.

"This place is kinda a shit hole." Ian laughed.

Mickey looked at his bed and saw that it was still unmade, his dirty sheets rumpled and it seemed like a different life.

"I know it is."

Ian kept walking around as if he was in a museum. Picking up papers just to put them back down. Looking continuously for more physical proof that this is what had swallowed Mickey up and kept him huddled in the dark for 5 long years.

"What's that sound?" He listened more closely and there is was – _plip plop plink_. Over and over and over.

He stormed over and slammed the handle of the sink with such force that he's sure he bruised his palm. "You've gotta be fucking kidding me." He hissed.

Ian walked over to where he stood and reach out lazily to jiggle the under part of the faucet. It immediately stopped dripping.

"It's just loose, needed to be tightened."

It just needed to be tightened – the dripping sink that drove him mad and nearly made Stella leave because she couldn't deal with the fall out of his tantrums from it. The same drip that kept him up at night counting all the ways the Ian in his mind had died. The fucking _drip_ that convinced him that he was crazy and this was what he deserved. The drip he thought was every manifestation of how he was fucked and always would be.

The drip that could be fixed – the drip that Ian Gallagher tightened – the drip that wasn't evil at all; the drip that had just been a little loose.


End file.
